You can emphasize, organize, or set apart portions of your document by adding borders or background shading. You can add borders or shading to blocks of characters, to paragraphs, to cells within tables, or to entire tables. (See Figure 9-12.) You can also have Word print borders around entire pages in your document. (See Figure 9-13.)
NOTE
As you have learned, if you create a table using the Insert Table menu command or button, it initially has a thin, solid border around all cells; and if you create a table using the Draw Table button on the Tables And Borders toolbar, you can assign it any style of borders (or no borders). In this section, you'll learn how to modify, remove, or add borders to a table that has already been created. Recall also that if you remove a border, Word will mark the cell gridline with a light gray line (which appears on the screen but doesn't print), provided that the Show Gridlines option on the Table menu is selected. Note that applying a theme to your document might modify the color of table borders.
To apply borders and shading to characters, paragraphs, or tables, you can use either the Tables And Borders toolbar or the Borders And Shading dialog box. To apply borders to pages, you must use the Borders And Shading dialog box.
Figure 9-12. Borders and shading applied to a block of characters, a paragraph, and a table.
ON THE WEB
The BordersShadingDemo.doc document file, used for the example in Figure 9-12, is on the Running Office 2000 Reader's Corner page.
Figure 9-13. Borders around a document page.
ON THE WEB
The DocBorderDemo.doc document file, used for the example in Figure 9-13, is on the Running Office 2000 Reader's Corner page.
NOTE
Borders or shading applied to paragraphs (not to characters, tables, or pages) are considered to be paragraph formatting. You can therefore use the techniques for paragraph formatting that were discussed in the previous chapters. For example, you can copy the formatting from one paragraph to another, or assign the formatting to a paragraph style.
You already learned how to use the Tables And Borders toolbar to create and modify tables (in the section "Drawing Tables"). In this section, you'll learn how to use it to apply (or modify) borders or shading around characters, paragraphs, cells within tables, or entire tables. Figure 9-14 shows the Tables And Borders toolbar, labeling each of the tools that you use for applying borders and shading. (For a brief description of all the buttons, see Figure 9-6.) If the toolbar isn't visible, you can display it by pointing to Toolbars on the View menu (or by right-clicking the menu bar or another toolbar) and choosing Tables And Borders.
SEE ALSO
For information about automatically adding horizontal borders (to the bottom of paragraphs), see "Using the AutoFormat As You Type Feature".
Figure 9-14. The Tables And Borders toolbar buttons that are used for applying borders and shading
The first step to adding borders or shading is to make an appropriate selection in one of the following ways:
To add borders to your selection, do the following:
As you position the pointer over each button on the palette, Word displays a ScreenTip describing the border—or combination of borders—that will be applied (Outside Border, Top Border, Left Border, Bottom Border, and so on). Borders labeled Inside are applicable only if you have selected more than one paragraph or table cell. (They will be added between the paragraphs or cells.) Diagonal borders can be applied only to table cells. And clicking the Horizontal Line button inserts a horizontal dividing line, not a border, and will be described in "Inserting Horizontal Dividing Lines" later in the chapter.
When you click the button, Word will immediately apply the border or borders to the selection in your document.
TIP
If ScreenTips don't appear, you can enable them by choosing Customize from the Tools menu, clicking the Options tab in the Customize dialog box, and selecting the Show ScreenTips On Toolbars option.
If the Borders tool doesn't have a button for the particular combination of borders you want to add, you can apply the borders one at a time. For example, to apply borders to the left and right of a paragraph, you could first click the Left Border button and then click the Right Border button. If you want the borders to have different properties (for example, different colors), you will have to return to step 1 before applying each border.
NOTE
The Borders button also appears on the Formatting toolbar. On either the Formatting toolbar or the Tables And Borders toolbar, you can click this button (rather than opening and using the palette) to apply the border style you most recently applied.
To remove a border from the selection, you can click the same button on the Borders palette that's used to apply that border. (The button will appear pressed in until you click it.) For you to be able to do this, however, the border's original style, weight, and color must still be selected on the toolbar. To remove all borders (regardless of the attributes selected on the toolbar), you can click the No Border button on the Borders palette.
TIP
To modify the properties of a border that has already been applied, select the new properties using the Line Style, Line Weight, and Border Color tools on the Tables And Borders toolbar (step 1 above); and then use the Borders tool to reapply the border (step 2 above).
To apply shading to the selected paragraph or table cells, click the down arrow next to the Shading Color button on the Tables And Borders toolbar, and then select the desired shading color from the palette. To remove shading, select No Fill at the top of the palette.
The Borders And Shading dialog box is not quite as easy to use as the Tables And Borders toolbar, but it provides the following additional options:
To apply one or more borders to your selection, proceed as follows:
The specific choices in this area depend on what you selected prior to opening the dialog box. (If you begin customizing borders, as explained in the next step, the Custom item will be automatically selected, so you don't need to click it yourself.) If you want to remove all borders, click None, and then click OK to close the dialog box. (In this case, you can skip the remaining steps.)
TIP
After you have applied borders to one or more paragraphs, you can adjust the clearance between a border and the text by dragging the border with the mouse.
NOTE
When applying borders or shading, keep in mind that the Automatic color choice applies the current Window Font color, which is usually black. To set Window Font color, use the Windows Control Panel's Display Properties dialog box.
To apply shading to your selection, do the following:
To give your document a polished or decorative look, you can have Word draw borders around entire pages. You can add page borders to the entire document or to part of the document. Borders will be visible in Print Layout view, in Print Preview, and of course on the printed page. If you're creating a Web page, however, page borders aren't for you—they won't be displayed in a browser.
To add page borders, do the following: