Forum Discussion

acs42's avatar
acs42
Copper Contributor
Dec 02, 2017

Draw tools are greyed out

I enabled the draw tools tab for my PC Excel 2016, but the tools are all greyed out.
excel
Digcoal's avatar
Digcoal
Copper Contributor
Aug 30, 2019
Hi, all. New to the forums. Late to the party. I want to say thanks for leading me in the right direction for this, and I would like to add that my particular problem was that I was in View>Page Layout. Draw Tool seem to only work in View>Normal or View>Page Break Preview. Warmest Regards
jcraok's avatar
jcraok
Copper Contributor
Nov 14, 2019

Digcoal Cheers for the heads up on this! It has been driving me nuts with draw being greyed out in Word. Changing the "view" from "web layout" which is where it defaulted to "Print Layout" enabled the draw tools.

  • Barbara_Presley's avatar
    Barbara_Presley
    Copper Contributor
    Feb 23, 2021

    jcraok

     

    I'm new to this, so I'm not sure I'm replying to the right person.  This fix did not work for me.  Any other suggestions?

     

  • Adrian Long's avatar
    Adrian Long
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 25, 2020

    jcraok , same thing with me too. I changed the document view to "page layout" and got my pens back! 

    • AndiagoSupremo's avatar
      AndiagoSupremo
      Copper Contributor
      Feb 04, 2022
      That was it. I have adobted View, Web Layout (since WFH I never print) and that greys out the Draw tools, so switching to Print Layout restores them. The drawing will show under Web layout, but it can't be changed.
    • jprugh's avatar
      jprugh
      Copper Contributor
      Aug 04, 2020

      Adrian Long i was able to draw in excel but saving the doc does not retain the drawing.  any suggestions?

       

      • Alte_M's avatar
        Alte_M
        Copper Contributor
        Aug 04, 2020

        jprugh  In my Excel for Mac v16.39, I can use the pens to draw, save the doc, and the drawing is retained.   Tried this by drawing across cells and drawing over a chart I inserted, and in both cases the drawing was retained.  So, can't help. Sorry.

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