[Solved!] Scroll Bar Not Working in Excel (5 Easy Fixes)

There are several reasons that you may get that the scroll bar is not working or scrolling by mouse may not work. As scrolling in Excel is a vital issue so it’s irritating if it doesn’t work. I hope this article will provide you with all the reasons and best possible solutions if the scroll bar is not working in Excel.

Scroll Bar Not Working in Excel: 5 Possible Solutions

To demonstrate the solutions, we’ll use the following dataset that represents some best-seller books and their prices sold by amazon.com.

1. Unfreeze Panes

One of the most common reasons is keeping enable the Freeze Panes feature of Excel. This feature freezes the specific part of the sheet. So no scrolling will affect that part. Have a look at my dataset, I scrolled down but it remains unscrolled. You may overlook the Freeze Panes line if your dataset is too long. Let’s see how to turn it off.

Steps:

• Click as follows: View > Freeze Panes > Unfreeze Panes.

Now see, the scroll bar is working.

2. Unstuck SHIFT Key to Fix Scroll Bar Not Working

It’s a rare issue but may happen accidentally. If the SHIFT key gets jammed somehow or any object keeps it pressed then scrolling by mouse won’t work. The scroll bar will work though.

Solutions:

• Repair the key or change the keyboard.
• Remove the object that has pressed the SHIFT key.

Read More: [Fixed!] Bottom Scroll Bar Missing in Excel 

3. Unmark ‘Zoom on roll with IntelliMouse’ to Scroll

There is a feature in Excel Advanced option that can change the function of the mouse’s scroll wheel. Then instead of scrolling, it will zoom the sheet although the scroll bar will work here.

Look at my dataset, my sheet is in 110% zoom. When I scrolled with my mouse then see what happened in the next image.

It zoomed 115% instead of scrolling.

Now let’s see how to disable the Zoom on roll with IntelliMouse feature.

Steps:

• Click on File beside the Home tab.

• Next, press Options from the appeared list.

• After appearing the Excel Options dialog box, click on Advanced.
• Then unmark Zoom on roll with IntelliMouse from the Editing options part.
• Finally, just press OK.

Then the scroll wheel will work as usual.

Read More: [Fixed!] Excel Scroll Bar Too Long

4. Fix Scroll Bar Not Working by Deleting Entire Empty Rows

Here, I’ll introduce a different kind of problem, related to the scroll bar not working issue. The scroll bar will work actually but it won’t work as we want. The dataset is too short but look, the scroll bar is also very short. However we know that there should be a large scroll bar for a small dataset.

When I scrolled a little bit, it passed a lot of rows at a time. So, there’s something wrong with my sheet.

To check the reason, press CTRL + END, it will take us to the last activated cell. Now see, it jumped to Cell C1048574. The cell was used before that’s why Excel jumped to that cell assuming it as the end of the dataset. Because once we use a cell, Excel keeps it saved. If we delete the cell then also it will keep that memory. Go forward to see how we can get rid of it.

Steps:

• Select any blank cell from the immediate row after the used row.

• Next, press simultaneously CTRL + SHIFT + Down Arrow key. It will select the entire cells till the last cell from that cell.
• Later, click as follows: Home > Delete > Delete Sheet Rows.
• Finally, just save your workbook.

The scroll bar has now recovered its usual size according to the dataset size.

Read More: [Solved]: Excel Scroll Bar Moves but Sheet Does Not

5. Recover Scroll Bar

It might happen that the scroll bar is not visible in your workbook, so you won’t be able to use it. Look at the following worksheet, there’s no horizontal or vertical scroll bar.

Follow the steps below to recover it.

Steps:

• Follow the first two steps from the 3rd method to open the Excel Options dialog box.
• After that, click on Advanced.
• Then mark Show horizontal scroll bar and Show vertical scroll bar from the Display options for this workbook part.
• Finally, just press OK.

Now see that the scroll bars are restored successfully.

Read More: [Fixed!] Excel Horizontal Scroll Bar Not Working

Download Practice Workbook

You can download the free Excel workbook from here and practice on your own.

Conclusion

I hope the procedures described above will be good enough to fix the problem when the scroll bar is not working in Excel. Feel free to ask any question in the comment section and please give me feedback.

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