Box/Gridlines from Excel when pasting into email/Word

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Hi All,

This may be a Windows or other question but since I’m starting with Excel, I thought I’d post this here.

I have some cells, say A1:A15, that I’d like to paste into an e-mail. The cells are constructed using formulas to pull info from other places in the file.

When I paste into the email (I’m using Verizon/Yahoo email and looking at this thru IE), I get a box around the cells (ie, a line above the equivalent of A1 and under A15 and to the left/right of the column). The Excel sheet has NO borders.

I don’t want the box in the email – just the contents of the cells.

I tried copying A1:A15 to the clipboard and then doing Paste Special | Values to A17:A31 in Excel and then copy these cells and paste to the email. Same box.

I turned off the gridlines for this sheet. Same result. (I never saw the gridlines in the email anyway.)

Of course, I see it exactly as I want, without the box, if I use Print Preview in Excel.

Just as a check, I pasted the cells into Word. Worse result (?). Now I see the gridlines in Word as a table with 15 rows but no borders around the table. I know if I printed this, the table gridlines would not come out. But if I paste the table from Word to the e-mail, I’m back to the same result as if I went directly from Excel to e-mail (the box is back but no gridlines).

I also tried converting the Word table to text and then pasting to email. This does get rid of the box but there are 2 drawbacks: the pasting gives extra spacing between the paragraphs which I don’t want; and, most importantly, this is TOO much work.

So the question is simple: how do I paste from Excel to email w/o getting the box?

PS: I found another unacceptable solution: Paste from Excel to Notepad and then to email. Problem with this is I’m losing rows from Excel that were left intentionally blank to create spacing (paragraph separator) when going from Notepad (blank rows show up) to email (blank rows lost so email looks squished up; I guess I could leave 2 blank rows in Excel to get 1 blank row in the email). BUT THIS IS TOO MUCH WORK ALSO.

Suggestions? (Of course, I could just live with the box in the email.)

TIA

Fred

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I think (not totally sure) that if you’re using OUTLOOK (I’m using 2010), it’s using Word as the editor. Then, it considers what you paste as a table.

I’ve had this happen to me and the only two resolutions I know of are (1) to select the table in the email (top left corner) and convert it to text. (Table Tools, Layout, Convert to Text).

And, (2) pasting it as un-formatted text works as well (Paste special) but you miss using CTRL+V as the easiest shortcut..

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After pasting into Outlook, right-click the table and select Table Properties. You can then set the borders and cell dividers as you want them.

Regards
Gordon

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If it was a matter of using Outlook, it is fairly simple to move the data using vba. The OP, however, indicates he is using Yahoo mail as his email client. I am thinking that this may be more of an issue with the way the yahoo client interprets the pasted data. I would be curious to see if the data was first converted to html then pasted, would the lines be persistent. I’d have to give this some more thought to offer a solution.

Maud

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This is for my friend who has a MAC. She uses AOL email. I wasn’t sure if, when I posted this late at night, whether this “box feature” would carry over to hers. So, Maud, VBA is out of the question.

When I click on the pasted version, I see the cross-arrows and handles as if the pasted version is a picture. I can click and get into the box and edit. So I checked with her this morning – a box around the contents is not the end of the world. May look a little funny to the recipient.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Fred

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