Change the color, style, or weight of a line

You can change the look of a line by changing its color, line style, or weight. If you are using Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Office Outlook, Microsoft Office Word, or Microsoft Office PowerPoint, you can apply a Quick Style to quickly change the look of your line. If you are using Microsoft Office Publisher, you can manually customize the color, style, or weight of your line.What do you want to do?

Add a Quick Style to a line

Change the color of a line

Make a line dashed

Change the weight of a line

Add a Quick Style to a line

Important Quick Styles are available only in these Microsoft Office system programs: Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint.

Quick Styles for lines include theme colors from the document theme, shadows, line styles, gradients, and three-dimensional (3-D) perspectives. Try different Quick Styles until you find one that you like. When you place your pointer over a Quick Style thumbnail, you can see how the Quick Style affects your line.

1. Select the line that you want to change.

   If you want to change multiple lines, select the first line, and then press and hold CTRL while you select the other lines.

2. Under Drawing Tools, on the Format tab, in the Shape Styles group, click the Quick Style that you want.

   To see more Quick Styles, click the More button .

Change the color of a line

For these Office release programs: Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint

1. Select the line that you want to change.

   If you want to change multiple lines, select the first line, and then press and hold CTRL while you select the other lines.

2. Under Drawing Tools, on the Format tab, in the Shape Styles group, click the arrow next to Shape Outline, and then click the color that you want.

   

   To change to a color that isn't in the theme colors, click More Outline Colors, and then either click the color that you want on the Standard tab, or mix your own color on the Custom tab. Custom colors and colors on the Standard tab are not updated if you later change the document theme .

For Office Publisher

1. Select the line that you want to change.

   If you want to change multiple lines, select the first line, and then press and hold CTRL while you select the other lines.

2. On the Drawing toolbar, click the arrow next to Line Color , and then click the color that you want.

   To change to a color that is not displayed, click More Outline Colors, and then either click the color that you want on the Standard tab, or mix your own color on the Custom tab.

Make a line dashed

For these Office release programs: Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint

1. Select the line that you want to change.

   If you want to change multiple lines, select the first line, and then press and hold CTRL while you select the other lines.

2. Under Drawing Tools, on the Format tab, in the Shape Styles group, click the arrow next to Shape Outline.

   

3. Point to Dashes, and then click the line style that you want.

   To create a custom style, click More Lines, and then choose the options that you want.

For Office Publisher

1. Select the line that you want to change.

   If you want to change multiple lines, select the first line, and then press and hold CTRL while you select the other lines.

2. On the Drawing toolbar, click Dash Style , and then click the style that you want .

Change the weight of a line

For these Office release programs: Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint

1. Select the line that you want to change.

   If you want to change multiple lines, select the first line, and then press and hold CTRL while you select the other lines.

2. Under Drawing Tools, on the Format tab, in the Shape Styles group, click the arrow next to Shape Outline.

   

3. Point to Weight, and then click the line weight that you want.

   To create a custom line weight, click More Lines, and then choose the options that you want.

For Office Publisher

1. Select the line that you want to change.

   If you want to change multiple lines, select the first line, and then press and hold CTRL while you select the other lines.

2. On the Drawing toolbar, click Line/Border Style , and then click the line weight that you want.

   To create a custom weight, click More Lines, and then choose the options that you want.

See also:

• Add or delete a fill, outline, or effect for text or WordArt
• Add or delete arrowheads