Odoo QWeb Table Border: controlling PDF table lines on every page

Short answer: Borders disappear after page breaks because the styles sit on table or tr, which wkhtmltopdf fails to repaint fully after a break. Put border on every td/th directly, use border-collapse: collapse, and test with real multi-page data.

Environment

• Odoo 17 / 18 / 19, QWeb PDF, wkhtmltopdf
• Most visible on multi-page tables (pair with Odoo QWeb: fixing PDF page breaks)

Symptoms

• First page borders complete, but top borders missing on following pages
• Vertical lines broken into segments after the break point
• HTML preview looks perfect, PDF loses lines

Cause: the preview is a real browser, while the PDF is rendered by wkhtmltopdf, which repaints table/row borders incompletely after breaks. Cell borders repaint correctly.

Working example

<div class="order-lines">
  <table class="report-table">
    <thead>
      <tr>
        <th>Description</th>
        <th>Qty</th>
        <th>Price</th>
      </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
      <tr t-foreach="doc.order_line" t-as="line">
        <td><span t-field="line.name"/></td>
        <td class="text-right"><span t-field="line.product_uom_qty"/></td>
        <td class="text-right"><span t-field="line.price_subtotal"/></td>
      </tr>
    </tbody>
  </table>
</div>

.report-table {
  width: 100%;
  border-collapse: collapse;
}
.report-table th,
.report-table td {
  border: 1px solid #333;
  padding: 4px 8px;
}
.report-table tr {
  page-break-inside: avoid;
}
.text-right {
  text-align: right;
}

Three rules cover most cases:

1. border lives on th/td only — never just on table/tr.
2. Always border-collapse: collapse so lines meet exactly.
3. Use solid, dark-enough colors (#333); faint lines vanish in print.

Extra techniques

Borderless tables with readable rows — alternate row shading instead of lines:

.report-table.clean td,
.report-table.clean th {
  border: none;
  border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc;
}
.report-table.clean tbody tr:nth-child(even) td {
  background-color: #f5f5f5;
}

Right-aligned numeric columns — use a class on td as above, never pad with spaces.

Overflowing tables — shrink the table's padding and font size first, not the whole page zoom:

.report-table {
  font-size: 12px;
}
.report-table th,
.report-table td {
  padding: 3px 6px;
}

Common mistakes

1. Borders only on table — first page fine, later pages broken.
2. Exotic border-style values like double or complex dashes — wkhtmltopdf support is incomplete; solid is safest.
3. Missing border-collapse — doubled, uneven lines.
4. Too-faint colors (#eee) — fine on screen, gone on paper; use #999 or darker.
5. Skipping the real print test — preview and PDF differ; always open the PDF file.

References

• Odoo QWeb Templates: https://www.odoo.com/documentation/master/developer/reference/frontend/qweb.html

Related notes

• Odoo QWeb: fixing PDF page breaks with real examples
• Odoo Automated Action: Fix forbidden opcode STORE_ATTR with record.write()
• All Odoo notes

Author: Napat Pamornsut — About · Projects · All notes