Last-Row Border Formatting

Subscriber Smokey Lynne Bare recently wrote about a problem encountered with formatting a table in Word. The table was formatted so the outline border used double lines, and the inside borders used single lines. Everything looked fine until the table extended to a second page. Then, the last line of the last row on the first page didn't switch to a double line, instead remaining a single line.

Before getting into how you can fix this, you should first make sure that you are looking at the table in the proper manner. If you look at the table in Normal view, it won't appear that the table is outlined properly at the page break. Instead, you must view the document in Page Layout view, or in Print Preview. In both of those views you should see the proper outline on the table.

If you still don't, then follow these steps:

1. Position the insertion point anywhere within the table.
2. Choose Borders and Shading from the Format menu. Word displays the Borders and Shading dialog box.
3. Make sure the Borders tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Borders and Shading Dialog Box

4. Make sure the Apply To drop-down list is set to Table.
5. Click on the None option. This removes any existing borders from the table.
6. In the Style list (that shows all the line styles), make sure a single line is chosen.
7. In the Preview area, click on the two internal lines, making sure that the line appears both horizontally and vertically.
8. In the Style list, choose a double line.
9. In the Preview area, click on the four outside lines, one at a time. When finished, the Preview area should be outlined using the double line, but have the single line used for the two internal lines.
10. Click on OK.

Now, when you view a multi-page table using Page Layout view or Print Preview, the table should be outlined in double lines on each page where the table appears. Only the interior lines should be single. If, for some reason, your table still doesn't behave in the described manner, it could be related to your printer driver. Make sure you have the most current driver for your printer, and try again.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (878) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Last-Row Border Formatting.