Member Avatar for Steve TRE

When I copy information from excel and do a paste special picture (enhanced metafile) all of the gridlines from excel are being pasted as well. This problem just started in July and is creating terrible headaches for us. Does anyone know how to fix this?

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Dani AI

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noted that an Enhanced Metafile paste is bringing Excel gridlines into Word. and already pointed out ways to remove them after the fact; the suggestions below add a few different, practical approaches that avoid those gridlines in the first place or let you remove them cleanly without reformatting the table.

Try "Copy as Picture" (use the printed appearance)
Select the range in Excel and use Edit -> Copy Picture... (Excel 2003) or Home -> Copy -> Copy as Picture... (Excel 2007+). Choose "As shown when printed" (and Picture). Paste into Word. This copies the worksheet as it would print, so screen-only gridlines are not included.

If you already pasted an EMF: ungroup and edit
Select the pasted Enhanced Metafile, right-click -> Group -> Ungroup. Word will convert the picture to drawing objects; the horizontal/vertical grid lines become separate shapes you can delete. Save a backup copy first — ungrouping is destructive.

Other tradeoffs to consider
Paste as a raster image (bitmap/PNG) via Paste Special to flatten everything — no separate line objects, but you lose clean scaling. Or paste as a live Excel object (Paste Special -> Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object) if you want editable data inside Word and then control borders from inside that object.

Quick checklist: try Copy as Picture (printed) first; if you must use EMF, save a copy then Ungroup and delete the unwanted lines; otherwise use a raster paste or an embedded worksheet depending on whether you need editability or scalable vector quality.

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Member Avatar for mjdodd

Not entirely but have had the same headaches. Word and excel handle grid lines differently! (Word uses a table) and excel's are inherent.
however I cured this by tuning off the grid lines in excel in the printer area (I cant remember exactly where) and thus when they were copied and pasted WORD then accepted the spreadsheet as a 'table' ,I use 2003 and I do not know 2007! (to me it sucks!)
BOL
m

Member Avatar for Suspishio

You could just PASTE and in word remove the grid lines from the table created by the paste. (As in Borders None)

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