Print cell borders with special 'skin'

[DavieM]

Hello
Since upgrading to Excel 2003 for Windows XP Home from Excel for Windows 95 I have experienced problems trying to print borders of cells with finer lines than 1pt. and also trying to print these borders in gray (grey) scale. I have read all the forum postings and it seems this is a general problem with Excel 2003. I have tried all the possible combinations and nothing works. Cell borders always print as black lines with the thickness no less than about 1pt. Excel for Windows 95 could be set up with thin cell border lines lower than 0.25pt. I have checked all the printer settings, driver updates, settings for color (colour) and not black and white etc. The printer I am using is a black and white HP 5P LaserJet.
I have decided to find a way around the problem. See what you think!
If you remove all the cell borders and replace them with rectangles (I can let you know an easy copy /paste way to do this) you are then able to set a rectangle outline grid for the whole worksheet which is as low as 0.25pt. Also, if you set the color (colour) to about 58% black you can achieve an even thinner (feint) line. The whole 'skin' of rectangles can be grouped together and the line thickness and color (colour) changed as required. This can be saved as a separate worksheet and copied / pasted as required.
It does mean that you have to set up a rectangle grid / skin for each new worksheet layout but this is a lot easier than messing around for hours like I did wondering what was going wrong. It would of course be much better if Microsoft were to change their programme to accomodate printing cell borders with finer lines. It would also help if they were to allow printing these to gray scale with the same range of thicknesses used for lines and rectangles, but I cannot see this happening.
If you know of a way of doing all this in a much easier way I would be extremely pleased to hear about it.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I have tried to make it as clear as possible. I hope it has been of some help.
Kind regards,
David