Word's options for borders in a document are moderately comprehensive and allow you to create a clear-cut layout or decorative design. You can apply borders to things like paragraphs, pages, table cells, etc. Learn how to set borders (along with shading) in your documents with the following articles.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Border' topic. Click the article''s title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

   Adding a Border around Multiple Paragraphs
Word makes it very easy to apply formatting to the paragraphs in your documents. Some of that formatting may be impossible to apply in the way you want, particularly if you are trying to apply a format that spans multiple paragraphs.

   Adding Borders to Cell Contents
Word allows you to quickly add borders to cells in a table, but you may not know that you can also add borders to the text within the cells. It all depends on a single setting in the Borders and Shading dialog box, as described here.

   Adding Borders to Paragraphs
Word allows you to quickly and easily add different types of borders to your paragraphs. Borders, background shading, and indentation can highlight information by visually separating it from the rest of the body text.

   Adding Drop-Shadows to Paragraphs
Drop shadows are a style of paragraph border used to enhance the visual impact of a paragraph. They are also a great way to make sure your text really pops off the page.

   Aligning Borders with the Page Margins
Add a border to a paragraph and you may find that it extends to the left and right of the regular text margins. To pull the borders back to where you want them, apply the ideas presented in this tip.

   Applying Borders to Tables
Want to change the borders that Word adds to your tables? You have complete control over the way your borders appear, using the tools described in this tip.

   Borders on Multiple Paragraphs with Differing Indents
When you place a border around a paragraph, the position of that border is determined, partially, by the indent with which the paragraph is formatted. If you have multiple paragraphs with borders and those paragraphs have different indents, then that can play havoc with your borders.

   Changing Paragraph Borders
Word allows you to easily add borders to a paragraph of text. If you want, you can even change each side of the border to be different from the other sites. This tip shows how this is done.

   Chopped Off Page Borders
Tired of your page borders not printing out as you expect? The problem could be due to any number of settings or conditions. Here are the things you can check out.

   Controlling Where a Full-page Border is Printed
When you add full-page borders to your document, you may be bothered to find out that one or more sides of the border don't actually appear on the printout. If this happens to you, then you can apply the techniques in this tip to make sure that the border prints as desired.

   Creating a Full-Page Border
Borders are easy to add around text or entire paragraphs. It may be surprising to you to learn that Word can just as easily place borders around entire pages. This tip explains how you can add this touch.

   Deleting Paragraph Borders
Got a document that has a border around some paragraphs? Here's how you can get rid of the border using the tools on the Home tab of the ribbon.

   Locking a Field
When you use fields in your document, you may want them to not change from a particular displayed result. You can lock individual fields so that they remain static from that point forward.

   Mysterious Blue Line between Paragraphs
Do you ever have mysterious lines show up between paragraphs either on your screen or on your printouts? It could be related to how the paragraphs are formatted, as detailed in this tip.

   Non-printing Page Borders
With your page border in place, you might be surprised if you don't see one side of the border (or all sides) print out with your document. Here's the reason for the missing border sides and what you can do about it.

   Removing Automatic Lines
Type a few dashes, underscores, or equal signs, and you could end up with a full-width line in your document. This is normal behavior for Word, but it may not be the behavior you want. This tip explains why you get these types of lines and how you can get rid of them.

   Setting the Distance between Text and Borders
Add a border around a piece of text (such as a paragraph), and Word makes some assumptions about the placement of that border relative to the text. Here's how to adjust the distance between text and any borders you may add.

   The Line that Won't Go Away
Have you ever had a line appear on your document that you can't seem to get rid of? It could be due to a built-in line-generating feature in Word. This tip explains the feature, shows how to control it, and finally discloses how to get rid of those bothersome lines in your document.

   Understanding Page Border Art
Add some artwork around the border of your printed page, and you may not know where that artwork comes from. You may also want to add your own graphics to be used as page borders. Because Word uses a proprietary format for this type of graphic, adding your own artwork may not be possible.