In Microsoft Word, when I chose the “no borders” option on table cells, they would completely disappear visually.
In Writer they are still visible as light gray lines.
Is there a way to make them completely invisible?
menu:View>Table Boundaries
Table boundaries are not table borders. The boundaries help editing tables. They do not belong to the document. They do not appear in print preview. They are not exported to pdf. P.S. and they do not appear when you turn a finished document into read-only mode (Edit>Edit Mode [Ctrl+Shift+M]).
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I understand that. Thank you for the solution.
I don’t often print nor export to pdf, but when I’m looking at documents on screen it’s nice to have a cleaner look by making the boundaries invisible.
All the visual hints in the View menu are highly helpful when editing a document to have an idea of what is really present.
I’d rather recommend not to disable these visual aids. If you want to look at the document the way it would appear to a reader on physical paper, I suggest to do so in print preview mode. It is only one click (on an icon in the main toolbar), so it is not a serious hindrance And one click to revert to “edit” view…
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Yes, I don’t remove the visual hints until I’m finished creating the document. But when I open it again to view it, I find all the extra lines distracting.
FYI, it’s only empty cells that I remove the lines from, so it’s not like I have tables with no lines/borders/boundaries at all. 
I don’t understand. Visual hints are global to the document: either they are displayed or hidden. You can’t be selective on a single table, even more on individual cells.
Borders, on the contrary, can be drawn or removed cell per cell, row or column, table per table.
Also, visual hints are a setting of the user profile. Consequently, they can’t be removed for a single document.
menu:File>Properties…
tab: Security
Open read-only: Check
You can omit the password, which lets you edit the file with a simple menu:Edit>Edit Mode… [Ctrl+Shift+M]
Alternatively, mark the file in your file manager as read-only.
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