I played with this a little more. If your selected range (with pattern)
includes cells with color, and cells without color - then your remove the
pattern - excel adds white as the cell color for cells that were originally
not colored. By adding the white cell color - the gridlines go away. Any
ideas how I can keep the colorless cells colorless? Maybe I need to write
some code...

"Filibuster" wrote:

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.