Switching between grid and line borders (Excel 2002/2003/2007)

Excel 2002's Draw Borders tool takes a lot of the pain out of applying borders to cells. Just open the Borders palette on the Formatting toolbar, select Draw Borders, and use your mouse pointer to draw where you want lines to appear. You can switch between whether the tool draws lines or grids using the toggle button on the Borders toolbar that appears. However, there's an easier way to switch between modes. Just hold down the [Ctrl] key. While the key is pressed, the tool applies whatever border formatting is opposite from the currently active mode.

This tip is even more handy in Excel 2007, where all of the Borders palette's options appear on the Borders button's dropdown list in the Font group of the Home tab. Instead of choosing Draw Border or Draw Border Grid from the dropdown list every time you want to switch, use the [Ctrl] key instead.