How to Add Cell Borders in Smartsheet

You open Smartsheet. You try to format your cells the same way you would in Excel — looking for that classic border button. It isn’t there.

That frustration hits almost every new Smartsheet user. And here’s the hard truth: Smartsheet does not support custom cell border formatting. According to Smartsheet’s own official documentation, “You cannot apply borders to cells or rows.” The Smartsheet community has been requesting this feature since at least 2016 — threads from frustrated users still pile up to this day.

But that doesn’t mean you’re stuck with a visually disorganized sheet. Far from it.

With over 11 million users globally and trusted by more than 85% of Fortune 500 companies, Smartsheet has clearly done something right — even without traditional cell borders. And once you know the right workarounds, you can make your sheets just as clean, readable, and organized as anything you’d build in Excel.

This guide walks you through every proven method to visually separate, highlight, and structure your Smartsheet data — so your sheets communicate clearly at a glance.

Why Smartsheet Doesn’t Have Native Cell Borders

Before diving into fixes, it helps to understand the “why.”

Smartsheet was designed as a dynamic, collaborative work management platform — not a static spreadsheet. Its grid is built for automation, real-time collaboration, and data workflows rather than complex visual formatting. The result? A powerful platform that trades some cosmetic flexibility for serious operational capability.

The collaborative work management software market is valued at $28.4 billion globally (Futurum Intelligence, 2023) and projected to grow to $34.4 billion — and Smartsheet sits at the heart of that growth. With $950 million in annual revenue reported in 2024 and deployments across 100,000+ organizations, it’s clear users are making it work.

The catch is knowing how to get visual clarity without the border button.

Background Color Fills — The Fastest Workaround

The most universally recommended workaround, straight from Smartsheet’s own community experts, is using background color fills to visually separate data groups.

Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Select the cells or rows you want to visually “border” or group.

Step 2: In the top toolbar, locate the Background Color button (it looks like a paint bucket icon).

Step 3: Choose a color that creates visual contrast. Light grays work especially well — they create the visual impression of borders without disrupting your data.

Step 4: Alternate colors across row groups to create a clear visual separation between sections.

Pro tip: Use very light shades — like a 10–20% gray — rather than bold fills. This creates a professional, clean look that still distinguishes data sections clearly without being distracting.

The catch: If you’re using conditional formatting for status indicators or priority flagging, heavy use of manual background colors can conflict with your rules. Plan your color strategy upfront.

Divider Columns — The Underrated Separator

One of the most effective (and underused) techniques in Smartsheet is using empty or dedicated divider columns to create visual “walls” between data sections.

Here’s the method:

Step 1: Right-click a column header and select Insert Column Right or Insert Column Left.

Step 2: Give the column a minimal name (a dash or period works fine) or leave it intentionally blank.

Step 3: Set the column width to a narrow size — around 20–30 pixels — so it acts like a visible border line.

Step 4: Apply a solid background color (dark gray or your brand’s accent color) to that entire divider column.

The result looks like a bold column border separating major data sections. Power users building client-facing sheets often use two or three divider columns across large sheets to create a multi-panel layout effect.

This approach also solves the printing problem that standard Smartsheet gridlines don’t handle well — many users find that sheet dividers print far more consistently than relying on light default grid lines.

Conditional Formatting — Dynamic Visual Borders That Update Automatically

Here’s where Smartsheet actually gives you something Excel’s static borders can’t easily match: formatting that changes automatically based on your data.

Conditional formatting in Smartsheet lets you automatically change background colors, text styles, and row highlights when specific conditions are met. Think of it as borders that react to your data.

How to set it up:

Step 1: Click the Conditional Formatting icon in the top toolbar (the icon with stacked colored bars).

Step 2: Select Add New Rule.

Step 3: Choose the condition — for example, “Status is Overdue” or “Priority is High.”

Step 4: Set the format: choose a background color that clearly highlights those rows.

Step 5: Decide whether to apply the format to the entire row or just specific columns.

Step 6: Click Save.

You can stack multiple rules — Smartsheet applies them in sequential order, so higher rules take priority over lower ones. This gives you a layered visual hierarchy that static borders simply can’t replicate.

Common use cases include highlighting overdue tasks in red, marking completed rows in soft green, and flagging high-priority items in yellow — all without any manual formatting work.

Key stat: Teams using conditional formatting for project visibility report spending significantly less time hunting for critical data in large sheets, since important rows surface automatically.

The Format Painter — Copy Visual Styles Instantly

Already formatted one section of your sheet and want to replicate that visual style elsewhere? Smartsheet’s Format Painter does exactly what it sounds like.

How to use it:

Step 1: Select the cells that have your desired formatting (background color, bold text, etc.).

Step 2: Click the Format Painter icon in the toolbar (it looks like a paint roller).

Step 3: Click the cells you want to apply that format to.

Power move: Double-click the Format Painter to lock it. This lets you apply the same format to multiple cell ranges without reselecting it each time. Press Escape or click the icon again to release the lock.

This saves significant time when you’re formatting large sheets with consistent visual structures — you set the look once and paint it everywhere else in seconds.

Row Hierarchy and Indentation — Structure That Replaces Borders

One of Smartsheet’s most powerful (and often overlooked) organizational features is row hierarchy through indentation. This creates parent-child relationships between rows, which Smartsheet automatically formats differently.

How to create hierarchy:

Step 1: Click a row that should become a “child” (sub-item) of another row.

Step 2: In the toolbar, click the Indent button (or use the right-arrow indent icon on the row itself).

Step 3: The row indents under the row above it, which becomes the “parent.”

What you get visually: Parent rows are automatically styled differently — they appear bold and with a slightly different background treatment. This creates an immediate visual grouping effect that functions like a thick top border on a section header, without you needing any border tool at all.

This is especially powerful in project sheets where you want to group tasks under phases or milestones. The visual separation is clean, professional, and scales easily.

Adding New Columns to Generate Bordered Cells

Here’s a quick but underappreciated fact: every time you add a new column in Smartsheet, that column comes with its own natural cell structure and gridlines. For users who just need more visual separation, simply reorganizing or adding columns to create clear data sections can make a significant organizational difference.

How to add a column:

Step 1: Go to the header of the column next to where you want to add a new one.

Step 2: Click the Column Menu button (the dropdown arrow in the column header).

Step 3: Select Insert Column Right or Insert Column Left.

Step 4: Name the column and set the column type (Text/Number, Date, Dropdown, etc.).

Step 5: Click OK.

The new column integrates with Smartsheet’s natural gridlines, adding clear visual definition to your sheet layout. Combined with background colors, this is a powerful lightweight approach for sheets that need clean visual organization fast.

Printing Your Sheet — Making Grid Lines Work for You

When it comes to printing, Smartsheet’s default gridlines are notoriously light and often don’t reproduce clearly. Here are the practical fixes:

Use alternating row colors: Apply a light background color (like a 5–10% gray) to every other row across your sheet. This creates the visual impression of bordered rows in the printed output and makes printed sheets dramatically easier to read.

Reduce column widths before printing: Compact columns print more cleanly and the gridlines appear more defined in the final output.

Use Print Preview: Smartsheet’s Print Preview mode shows you exactly how gridlines and colors will appear. Check it before sending anything to print.

Export to PDF first: Many users find that exporting to PDF via Smartsheet’s built-in export gives better print control — you can review exact layout before printing, and PDFs display gridlines more consistently across devices and printers.

Quick Comparison: Smartsheet Border Workarounds

The Smartsheet Formatting Mindset Shift

Here’s the reframe that makes everything click: Smartsheet’s visual organization is dynamic, not static.

Instead of drawing borders around cells, you’re building formatting systems that respond to your data. That’s a fundamentally different approach from Excel — and in many cases, a more powerful one.

Over 63.8% of organizations surveyed in Futurum Intelligence’s 2024 Enterprise Applications IT Decision Makers Survey had deployed project management software — and Smartsheet consistently leads that category with a 4.5 out of 5 rating on both G2 and Capterra.

The teams winning in Smartsheet aren’t trying to replicate Excel. They’re using Smartsheet’s native tools — conditional formatting, hierarchy, color fills, divider columns — to build sheets that update themselves as projects evolve.

Once you adopt that mindset, the absence of a border button stops feeling like a limitation and starts feeling like a feature.

Conclusion

Smartsheet doesn’t have a border button — and that’s unlikely to change soon. But as this guide has shown, you don’t need one.

Background color fills, divider columns, conditional formatting, the Format Painter, and row hierarchy together give you a complete toolkit for building visually organized, professional-looking sheets. The key is shifting from a static formatting mindset to a dynamic one — letting your data drive the visual structure rather than manually painting borders around it.

With 11 million+ users globally, $950 million in annual revenue, and 85%+ of Fortune 500 companies running on it, Smartsheet clearly delivers results without native border tools. Apply the methods in this guide, and your sheets will reflect that same level of clarity and professionalism.

Start with background color fills today — they take less than a minute to apply and immediately transform how your data reads at a glance.