Alternating Row Colors in SharePoint: A Step-by-Step Guide

In 2016, I wrote about how to apply alternate row shading to classic SharePoint lists. This is still helpful for those of you on SharePoint Server or using classic list experiences.

For those of you using SharePoint Online, the steps are quite different. The same applies to modern list and library experiences in later SharePoint Server versions. You can follow the steps in this post, or check out my SharePoint alternating row colors video demonstration.

Apply alternating row shading to a SharePoint list view

1. Navigate to the view of the list or library to which you want to apply alternating row colors.
2. Select the caret symbol next to the list view name and select Format current view.

3. Select Alternating row styles then select Save as shown in the following screenshot.

That’s all there is to it IF you want gray as your alternating color. Continue reading if you’d like more colors or even borders and font style changes.

How to change the color of alternating rows in a SharePoint list

1. Navigate to the view of the list to which you want to apply alternating row shading.
2. Select the dropdown arrow symbol next to the list view name and select Format current view.
   

3. Select Edit row styles under Alternating row styles.

4. Select the edit icon to the right of Odd rows or Even rows (whichever you’d like to change first).

5. For each edit icon (odd and even) you can select a different color as seen in the following where I’ve chosen yellow and blue, respectively.

6. Select Save if finished. If you don’t like the pastel options or just want more row style options like font changes, select More styles. Here, you can choose from pastel or dark options. You may need to change the Text color property as well if you’re using dark fill options. This will ensure that the text is legible. For example, in the following screenshot a dark blue fill is used. The Text color has been changed to white for better visibility. You can also set alternating rows to have borders, bold/italic/underlined/strikethrough font, and different font sizes.

7. Select Save if finished, or the back arrow next to Change style to return to your Odd rows and Even rows panel for additional changes.

Tip
Sometimes if your changes aren’t previewed right away, you need to select Save and refresh your browser.

A video demonstration of these steps follows: