Lots of spreadsheet users can’t imagine life without their double underline feature. There has been much gnashing of teeth for those making the switch to Google Sheets when they find that their faithful double underline function is not there. This is one of the few ways in which Sheets is inferior to Excel. What is one to do? Before you abandon ship, you should realize that there are a few decent work arounds for the issues. None of them are perfect, but you should be able to get the effect that you are looking for.
Update – As of late February 2017, a double underline is available in Google sheets without needing to use any workarounds.
The remainder of this article is preserved just in case you want to know how hard we had it way back when!
Bottom border and underline
The first option is to use a single bottom border on a cell and then use the underline font style. As you can see, this does creates two lines, but the top line is only as wide as the characters in the cell. Therefore, it won’t really look like a true double underline.
Underscores and strikethrough
The next option is to type use insert a line of underscores (to the right of the zero hold down shift) in a cell and then apply the strikethrough font style. This will create a double line. The disadvantage of this technique though is that it will be a fixed width. Therefore, if the width of the cell changes, this “underline” will not be the right size anymore.
Two single bottom borders
The next option is to use the single bottom border on two rows and then shrink the row height to make it look like a double underline. In my opinion, this is most likely going to be your best bet.
Vincent Terpe says:
Yep, but can you make a double bottom border and a single top border? This is the traditional format in accounting to indicate a total cell. But doesn’t seem to be supported in Sheets. You can fudge it by placing a single border in the cell above, but why when it should be part of the design. Goes to show, billion-dollar companies are not always that great.
Prolific Oaktree says:
The short answer is no. But, you could do one in steps then just use the Format Painter.