1px vs thin, IE vs Excel issues

Question

I have an html table which is rendered in IE, and Excel (for reporting)

If I set the border-width to thin, it shows a 2px border in IE, and a 1px border in Excel.

However, if I set it to 1px, it shows a 1px border in IE, and a 2px border in Excel(???).

How can I get them to BOTH show a 1px border as it looks horrible with a 2px border.

Answer 1

Saving a excel file to html genrates CSS like so:

.xl32
{mso-style-parent:style0;
border-top:.5pt solid windowtext;
border-right:1.0pt solid windowtext;
border-bottom:1.0pt solid windowtext;
border-left:.5pt solid windowtext;}

.5 displays as a normal line, 1.0 as a thick line So i guess setting te with to .5pt should work...

Answer 2

I don't know anything about HTML Tables rendered in Excel. I'm curious if it uses IE rendering engine, or some custom rendering engine. (It sounds like it might use a custom one, based on the differences.)

One thing you could try is setting the border to 'thin', and then having a separate CSS rule inside a Conditional IE statement. See QuirksMode.org for more information on IE Conditionals.

So it could be:

<style>
   table { border: thin solid black; }
</style>

<!--[if lt IE 9]>
<style>
   table { border: 1px solid black; }
</style>
<![endif]-->