hline: Set horizontal borders below selected rows

In flextable: Functions for Tabular Reporting

Set horizontal borders below selected rows

Description

hline() draws a horizontal line below each selected row by setting the bottom border of cells at row i (and the top border of cells at row i + 1 so that the line renders consistently across output formats).

Use the i selector to target specific rows (e.g. a formula such as ~ before(col, "Total")). When i is NULL (the default) the border is added below every row, which produces a full grid of inner horizontal lines.

For the outer edges of the table, use hline_top() and hline_bottom() instead; those always target the very first or very last row of a part.

Usage

hline(x, i = NULL, j = NULL, border = NULL, part = "body")

Arguments

x	a 'flextable' object, see flextable-package to learn how to create 'flextable' object.
i	row selector, see section Row selection with the i parameter in <Selectors in flextable>.
j	column selector, see section Column selection with the j parameter in <Selectors in flextable>.
border	border properties defined by a call to officer::fp_border()
part	part selector, see section Part selection with the part parameter in <Selectors in flextable>. Value 'all' can be used.

See Also

Other borders management: border_inner(), border_inner_h(), border_inner_v(), border_outer(), border_remove(), hline_bottom(), hline_top(), surround(), vline(), vline_left(), vline_right()

Examples

library(officer)
std_border <- fp_border(color = "gray")

ft <- flextable(head(iris))
ft <- border_remove(x = ft)

# add horizontal borders below every row
ft <- hline(ft, part = "all", border = std_border)
ft

flextable documentation built on June 2, 2026, 9:08 a.m.