In Excel 2007 if you fill the cell with anything but pattern color, you can
remove the pattern by selecting the pattern style at the top left of the
selections and the fill color will remain. However, if you used Pattern
color to fill the cell, the patter color will be removed also. I don't think
previous versions of Excel had pattern color in the Fill tab in Format
Cells.

Tyro


"Filibuster" wrote in message
...
How can I remove a cell pattern without affecting the cell color or
gridlines?

Here is what happened. I have a spreadsheet that is 100x100 cells. The
cells had various colors applied using the Format Cells/Patterns/Cell
Shading
dialog. I temporarily wanted to flag these cells as DO NOT EDIT by adding
a
pattern (light dots) using the Format Cells/Patterns/Pattern dialog. I
went
back to remove the pattern using the same dialog, but the gridlines are no
longer visible. I looked in MS Help - they suggest clicking on the Fill
tool
and selecting NO FILL. When I do this, the gridlines come back, but the
cell
coloring is now gone. Is there a way to remove the pattern while
preserving
the grid and original cell coloring? Thanks so much.