Forum Discussion
Excel Zoom slider greyed out and Customized Status Bar is blank
I needed to upgrade my old laptop since it was having problems. My employer sent me an identical system. They both run Windows (same version and OS patch levels). They both have Office 365 with identical patch levels. I use Excel all day for my job. Once my new system was ready and my files copied over, I noticed in Excel that my views were small and it appeared that the Zoom slider bar in the bottom right was greyed out and at 10%. Also, when I highlighted two numbers, the sum/average in the Customized Status Bar was missing. Nothing I did would bring it back. I opened a new spreadsheet and the same thing was happening. After an Office reinstall, same results. I contacted our support team and they were not able help solve the issue either. But, they did determine that the Zoom and Status bar comes back when I change my Excel to Automatic Calculations. I keep all my files set to Manual calculations since I have very large files with hundreds of thousands formulas. I am not able to keep it on Automatic. Both machines are the same and I am testing with many of my files with the same results. I'm not sure how to correct the problem. I did some testing today to flip to Automatic and save the file but that didn't work when I opened it up and flipped it back to Manual. The Zoom bar greyed out again. I really don't understand the differences in these machines and versions of Excel.
- I suspect you have an Excel add-in which is causing havoc. Open File, Options and click the add-ins tab. Click the Go... button. Note which add-ins are checked and uncheck them one at the time, each time closing the dialog and rebooting Excel and retrying to open a file. If it starts behaving you've found the problem add-in.
There are two types of add-ins, so repeat this process for File, Options, Add-ins tab, click the drop-down and choose "COM add-ins".
In addition, a file may be automatically loaded from two different locations.
1. File, Options, Advanced tab, General section there is a box that says "At startup, open all files in:", note what is there and clear it.
2. Close Excel and open Windows Explorer and type this in the address bar: %appdata%\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART and hit Enter. Move all files from that location to somewhere else.
Now reboot Excel
7 Replies
Can a bit vaguely remember about the same problem a long time ago,
with Office 2010, maybe that will help with 365 ... if there are no macros in the sheet that do this.
On some computers it was enough to simply minimize Excel.
If you then "clicked up" again via the Excel taskbar, the menu was completely (colored) there again
and you could use the functions, as strange as it sounds.
Such phenomena are sometimes also due to the driver of the graphics card.
Please try to see if you can update the graphics card driver.
Just a thought, don't know if it can work, you never know, if not please just ignore it.
- The sum/average calculations can be reinstated by a right-click on the statusbar. Other than that, I have never heard of a connection between zoom level or the slider and the calculation settings. What happens when you open Excel in safe mode (press and hold the control key while you launch Excel for the first time, click Yes when prompted and then open one of those files)?
Thanks Jan for reply back so fast! The Status bar is already turned on but it's not visible if I have Manual mode set for Calculations. I did open both a new Excel file and one of my existing file in Safe mode. Both the Status bar and Zoom slide were visible again. The file was still in Manual Calculation mode too. Any idea what this means?
fyi, I pulled up one of my files in Safe mode and saved it to a new name. When I opened that file not in Safe mode, the Zoom slide was greyed out again and the Status Bar was missing.
- I suspect you have an Excel add-in which is causing havoc. Open File, Options and click the add-ins tab. Click the Go... button. Note which add-ins are checked and uncheck them one at the time, each time closing the dialog and rebooting Excel and retrying to open a file. If it starts behaving you've found the problem add-in.
There are two types of add-ins, so repeat this process for File, Options, Add-ins tab, click the drop-down and choose "COM add-ins".
In addition, a file may be automatically loaded from two different locations.
1. File, Options, Advanced tab, General section there is a box that says "At startup, open all files in:", note what is there and clear it.
2. Close Excel and open Windows Explorer and type this in the address bar: %appdata%\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART and hit Enter. Move all files from that location to somewhere else.
Now reboot Excel
