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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.

  • Digcoal's avatar
    Digcoal
    Copper Contributor
    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

      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.

      • Adrian Long's avatar
        Adrian Long
        Copper Contributor

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

    • kozm0s's avatar
      kozm0s
      Copper Contributor
      Thank you for your feedback. I had the same issue on my SP7 with the official Microsoft Pen. The solution worked for me. As mentioned, the Draw Tool only works in certain View layouts.
  • Alte_M's avatar
    Alte_M
    Copper Contributor

    acs42  They are greyed out in print layout view. A change to Normal view enables draw tools.

  • Draw tools (along with many others) are disabled on protected sheets.  Try unprotecting the sheet.

    • acs42's avatar
      acs42
      Copper Contributor

      I can’t check that at the moment, but I think you’ve solved it for me.  The sheet isn’t protected but it is in xlsm format.  I bet that’s the problem.

       

      Many thanks.

      • acs42's avatar
        acs42
        Copper Contributor

        Further to my previous post, the problem occurred on worksheets that used the "Freeze Panes/Rows" option.  Nothing to do with the xlsm format after all.  I unfroze a top row and the "Draw" items lit up.

    • maurymo's avatar
      maurymo
      Copper Contributor

      On the toolbar, click the View tab, and then Print Layout. Return to the Draw tab, and it should no longer be grayed-out. 

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