How to Unlock Grayed-out Menus in Excel?

Are all or some menu options grayed out in Excel for you? Some Office users have reported that certain or many menus are grayed out in their Excel sheets. Whenever they try to click on such menus, the options are unavailable and can’t be used. This problem could be a result of different factors. Let us try and understand the reasons behind this issue..

Why is Excel menu greyed out?

Menu options being grayed out in Microsoft Excel is quite common. Some menu options go grayed or unavailable when you are editing a cell in your worksheet. In that case, you must press the Enter button to unlock such menu options. Besides that, if a workbook is password protected, you will not have access to most of the menu items in the workbook, which results in menus going gray.

There are other reasons you may be unable to click on some menu options in your Excel sheet. Some display options’ settings for your workbook could be a cause of this issue. Worksheets in a workbook being grouped can be another reason for the same. Apart from that, Excel file version compatibility issues can also cause some menu options being grayed out.

If you also see too many menus being unavailable or grayed out in Excel, this post will help you fix the problem. Here, we will show you multiple methods to help you unlock the grayed-out menus in Microsoft Excel.

How to unlock Grayed-out menus in Excel?

Here are the different ways to unlock the grayed-out menus in Microsoft Excel on Windows 11/10:

1. Hit the Enter button to unlock the grayed-out menu.
2. Unprotect Sheet/Workbook to unlock the grayed-out menu.
3. Ungroup worksheets to unlock grayed-out menu.
4. Change Advanced Options to unlock grayed-out menu.
5. Convert your workbook to a compatible version with your Excel app.

1] Hit the Enter button to unlock the grayed-out menu

The menus appear grayed out when you are editing a particular cell in your worksheet. To unlock the grayed-out menus, the easiest way is to press the Enter button on your keyboard and you will see the grayed menu options being unlocked. You can now use any of the menu options as per your requirement.

If the problem remains the same, there might be another reason behind the issue. So, you can move on to the next solution to unlock the grayed-out menu options in Excel.

See: How to fix #SPILL! error in Excel?

2] Unprotect Sheet/Workbook to unlock the grayed-out menu

The reason why you see several menu options being grayed out in your Excel worksheet could be the fact that it is password protected. Hence, if that case, you must unprotect the worksheet in order to edit the worksheet and unlock all menu options.

To remove password protection from an Excel worksheet, go to the Review tab and click on the Unprotect Sheet button. Now, you need to enter the correct password for the worksheet to unlock it. Do that and press the OK button. Once done, check if the grayed-out menu options are unlocked or not.

If the problem is happening in the entire workbook, you can unprotect it. For that, click on the Review > Unprotect Workbook option and then enter the right password.

Read: How to add Error bars in Microsoft Excel?

3] Ungroup worksheets to unlock grayed-out menu

If the above methods didn’t work for you, it might be the case that the current worksheet is grouped with other worksheets in the workbook. And as a result, you are seeing some menu options being grayed out or unavailable. So, if the scenario is applicable, you can ungroup your worksheets and then see if the grayed-out menus are unlocked.

Here’s how to do that:

First, right-click on a worksheet tab from the bottom of the Excel window.

Now, from the appeared options, click on the Select All Sheets option as shown in the above screenshot.

Once all the worksheets are selected, right-click on any of the worksheet tabs. And then, select the Ungroup Sheets option from the context menu.

The grayed-out menus must be unlocked and available now.

Read: How to fix the #VALUE error in Excel?

4] Change Advanced Options to unlock grayed-out menu

As reported by some affected users, if the For objects, show option in your Excel settings is set to Nothing (hide objects), the menu items are likely to be grayed out. So, if this scenario is applicable, you can change this option to fix and unlock grayed-out menus.

Here’s how:

First, click on the File menu in Excel and then move to Options. Next, in the appeared Excel Options window, move to the Advanced tab from the left-side pane.

Now, scroll down the Display options for this workbook section and you will see a For objects, show option under this section. Simply set this option to All.

When done, press the OK button to save changes. The menu items that were grayed out should be unlocked and become available now.

See: Fix Errors were detected while saving Excel file.

5] Convert your workbook to a compatible version with your Excel app

Compatibility issues between your workbook file format and the version of Excel you are using could cause the issue. For example, if the workbook you have opened in your Excel app is of an older Excel version and you are using a newer Excel version, you may face this issue. Hence, it is recommended to convert your workbook file format to a compatible version with your Excel app, preferably XLS and XLSX.

You can also use Excel’s Compatibility Checker tool to do the same. To verify whether a workbook is compatible with Excel 2007 or later, you can go to the File > Info option. Then, press the Check for Issues drop-down option and choose Check Compatibility. It will show you if the workbook is compatible with Excel or not. If not, you can change its file format.

How do I unlock the menu in Excel?

If you don’t see any menu options on the ribbon in Excel, simply press the CTRL+F1 key to quickly show or hide the menu options. You can also click on the Ribbon Display Options from the top-right corner of the window and press the Show Tabs and Commands option to display all the menu tabs and menu options.

Now read: How to enable or disable Error checking rules in Excel?