Change the Background of a Worksheet

October 20, 2023 - by Bill Jelen

Problem: Excel looks boring. It generally has black text on a white background, with gray lines. Can I change the background of a worksheet to liven it up?

Strategy: If you have an opening menu worksheet in your workbook, you can change the background to any picture. You start by selecting Page Layout, Background. Excel will let you browse for any image on your computer. The image will be tiled to form the background.

A picture is used as a background. The text in the cells (and even the gridlines) appear on top of the picture. — Figure 1379. Picture as a background.

To present a cleaner view, you can turn off the gridlines for the worksheet. The Show/Hide group on the View tab allows you to turn off the gridlines, the formula bar, and the row/column headings.

On the View tab, there is a Show group. Turn off Gridlines and Headings. Keep Formula Bar selected. — Figure 1380. Turn off gridlines and other elements on the View tab.

You can control other worksheet elements in the Excel Options dialog. Choose File, Options, Advanced. Scroll down to Display Options for This Workbook. You can turn off the display of sheet tabs and the scrollbars.

In Advanced options, there is a section called Display Options For This Workbook. Unselect all three of these settings:
Show Horizontal Scroll Bar
Show Vertical Scroll Bar
Show Sheet Tabs — Figure 1381. Turn off scrollbars in the Excel Options dialog.

Your worksheet will now look cleaner.

The Menu worksheet with a background picture looks better. The gridlines are gone. Hyperlinks for the various worksheets appear in the sky of the picture. — Figure 1382. No gridlines.

Gotcha: Turning off all the scrollbar and sheet tab options will affect the entire workbook. Because someone will have to enter data on the other worksheets, this might make it difficult to actually use Excel when an Excel rookie moves on to the other worksheets in the workbook.

Gotcha: The background will never print. See the next topic for a workaround.

Gotcha: If you zoom in or out, the cell sizes will change, but the picture will stay the same size. You might get a picture that perfectly fills A1:J15, but after zooming out, the picture will cover A1:M20.

Additional Details: In order to change the background image on a worksheet, you must first remove the first image by selecting Page Layout, Delete Picture.

This article is an excerpt from Power Excel With MrExcel

Title photo by Rabih Shasha on Unsplash