Excel Won’t Scroll: 11 Easy Fixes That Work

Imagine you are working with an Excel file where you need to scroll down and suddenly you cannot scroll through your workbook with your mouse wheel. Sometimes you may even find that there is even no scroll bar in the spreadsheet.

Sometimes for such an issue, the primary fix is to open the excel file in another spreadsheet file application to see if you can scroll through your workbook. But often you will not have such an option to check your file with another program and will need Excel to work.

In these cases, you have to find fixes for your Excel won’t scroll issue. Well, you have come to the right place for just that. Look no further, because we have got all the possible fixes for your Excel won’t scroll issue.

So what are you waiting for? Let’s start.

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Excel Not Scrolling Fixes

Excel Not Scrolling Fixes

There are many reasons that Excel may not allow you to scroll in your spreadsheet files. But most of the time Excel will bother you with this if your Excel file is poorly formatted, or if you are working with a file you got from another system.

You can check if scrolling altogether is working or not in your excel spreadsheet by using the arrow keys on your keyboard. But if it does not work, here are 11 methods that will fix your Excel won’t scroll issue. For your convenience, we have also provided images so that you can follow along with the steps.

Let’s jump in.

Turn Off the Scroll Lock

Excel, or for that matter, any windows application may not let you scroll up or down if you have your Scroll Lock turned on. When the Scroll lock is disabled, excel can freely move between the individual cells with the arrow keys. But with the Scroll Lock key enabled, Excel will scroll through whole rows or columns.

This may not be the desired scrolling option for you. To resolve this, just find the Scroll Lock key on your keyboard and turn it off. Many keyboards will have lights to indicate the status of the Scroll Lock key while many others don’t. Just toggle the key to be sure.

To figure out if your Scroll Lock button is enabled, look at the bottom of Excel to check the Status Bar. If the Scroll Lock key is enabled, you will see a message like this.

Some of the newer 60%, 70%, and 84% keys do not even have the Scroll Lock key on them. In this case, in Windows 10, press the ‘Windows Key’ and type in On-screen Keyboard. This will bring up the On screen Keyboard.

On the default on screen keyboard in Windows look at the right side and click on the Scrlk key to toggle the scroll lock.

For Windows 7, click on Start. Go to All Programs>Accessories> Ease of Access and find the On-Screen Keyboard.

For Windows 8.1, press Start. Press CTRL+C. This will bring up the Charms bar. Click on Change PC Settings and go to Ease of Access>Keyboard>On Screen Keyboard.

And Excel should let you scroll again. But if still Excel does not let you scroll within your workbook, just go down this list and check all the solutions that we present.

Autoscroll by Clicking Your Mouse Wheel Button

If your Excel is not scrolling normally with your mouse scroll wheel, then you may try and click on the mouse scroll wheel to bring up the automatic scrolling option.

Here we have a demonstration in the image below

After clicking on the middle mouse button, which is otherwise known as the scroll wheel button, you will get a black reticle like the one shown in the image.

Now, just move your mouse up or down to quickly automatically scroll up and down your workbook. Then you can just click the middle mouse button to stop auto scrolling. This hopefully will help you with your Excel not scrolling issue.

Make Sure Your Shift Button Is Not Stuck

Scrolling in Excel does not work if you have your SHIFT key pressed down. Now you might be thinking that you don’t have your Shift key pressed. So why won’t your scroll bar work?

Well, it is possible that your SHIFT key may be stuck. This may emulate pressing down your SHIFT key and Excel won’t let you scroll. Or it is even possible that you have a faulty SHIFT key, and in that case, all of your texts would appear in uppercase.

If your SHIFT key is stuck on something or being pressed down by something, just clear the SHIFT key. If the SHIFT key is broken or faulty, try working with another keyboard if you have access to any more just to check

Close Any Open Dialogue Boxes

Excel will not let you scroll if you have an Excel dialogue box open somewhere. This is a common case if you have two monitors and perhaps a dialogue box is opened in the second monitor that you may not be paying attention to.

For example, we have a Macros dialogue box opened for demonstration purposes:

Excel will not let us scroll through this workbook without first closing this dialogue box. And if you are not paying attention to your second monitor you may not see the opened dialogue box.

Normally Excel would alert you by flashing the dialogue box and playing a sound so that you know that a dialogue box is open in the background. If you have your PC muted, you would not be able to detect it immediately.

So, keep a lookout for this issue if you find your excel not scrolling and just close the dialogue box to fix it.

Unfreeze Panes

Sometimes scrolling in Excel will not work if you have frozen panes in your workbook. This is especially common if you are working with a file that you got from a colleague.

In this scenario, you have to unfreeze any panes in your workbook to make the scrolling in Excel work again. To do this, follow this process here:

1. Go to the View tab in your Excel towards the right corner and click on the Freeze Panes options

2. If there are any frozen panes in your spreadsheet, you will see the Unfreeze Panes options. Just click on the option and try to scroll down the file.

If there were any frozen panes in your workbook, these steps will unfreeze them. You can then just scroll up and down your spreadsheet

Restore Your Missing Scroll Bars

You may find that you have no unfrozen panes in your workbook, but there are no scrollbars in your worksheet. This is especially frustrating when you have a long list of data in your workbook and using your mouse scroll wheel just won’t cut it.

In this case, you should check if you have scroll bars disabled in your Excel settings. This can happen if your Excel is misconfigured. If this is the case, just follow these steps to enable the scroll bars again.

1. Click on File in Excel and select Options at the very bottom. If you don’t see Options, just click on More and you will find Options.

2. Clicking Options will bring a pop-up menu. In the new menu click on Advanced towards the bottom part.

3. Scroll down till you find an option named “Display Option for this Workbook”. You will find checkboxes to enable or disable Horizontal Scroll bar and Vertical scroll bar. Make sure you have the two options checked.

4. Click OK on the

This should bring back scroll bars to your Excel file.

Enable Automatic Height Adjustment

Sometimes Excel is just stubborn and won’t display files with custom formatted files. So, if you have a worksheet with a custom formatted file where you have a custom height and width for your rows and columns, excel may just not let you scroll through the workbook.

It is worth checking to see if reverting your custom formatting to automatic may help you with the scrolling. We know the value of a well-presentable worksheet. But functionality over looks, right?

To check if automatic height and width adjustment fixes your excel not scrolling issue follow these steps:

1. Select all the rows with CTLR+A.

2. After all the rows are selected, click on your Home tab and at the right-hand side cick on Formatting.

3. As you can see in the image, click on Autofit Row Height and Autofit Row width. This will remove all the height and width adjustments you may have made to your worksheet as you can see in the next image.

This is a problem that is most often Excel Specific. And these spreadsheet files may work without any scroll issue in Google Sheets or other spreadsheet applications like LibreOffice Calc.

You can head over to our Excel vs Google sheets comparison to check if Google sheets fits your needs.

Fix Excel Zooming In or Out Rather Than Scrolling Issue

Often you may face an issue where you find that Excel is zooming in or out when you are scrolling your mouse wheel and not scrolling up and down the worksheet. This is most likely because you have zoom with mouse scroll enabled.

To disable this, follow these steps:

1. Go to File>Options or Files>More>Options and click on Advanced as you did in the Missing Scroll Wheels section in our guide.

2. Click on Advanced and look for the “Zoom on roll with IntelliMouse” option as you see in the image.

3. Make sure you have the option unselected and click OK.

Now you should see that your Excel does not zoom if you scroll your mouse wheel. Rather it should scroll up and down your workbook.

Or, maybe it is just that your CTRL button is pressed down or stuck and Excel will just zoom instead of just scrolling through your workbook. Just release the CTRL key or just check with another keyboard, if you have access to them, just to be sure. And you may be able to scroll again.

Disable Split View

Mostly when working with Excel files from third parties or Excel files generated in another system will be the most problematic to deal with. This is especially the case with the Split view.

Often, for convenience, Excel users may want to work with a Split view. But if you have got a file from a third party you may not understand if a split view is enabled.

For example, look at the image below.

As you can see, there is a big plus shaped divider on the screen and two scroll handles on the side. If you notice closely, you will see that there are two scroll bars on the right hand side of the workbook instead of one. If you are not familiar with a split view in Excel you may not recognize this issue.

In such a case, you will surely find that Excel will not let you scroll on certain parts of this page. But in other portions of Excel, you will be able to scroll just fine. And for most new users, this will be a difficult problem to troubleshoot because you may think that it is a visual glitch and may try and restart Excel to solve the issue.

You may also think that Excel is not responding and try to even uninstall and reinstall Excel itself. But the problem, in this case, is that Excel is configured to show you data in a split view in this particular file.

If that is the case. Just follow the steps below to get back to the regular view on Excel.

1. Click on the View tab on the ribbon in Excel.

2. Look closely on the right hand to find that the option Split is highlighted like the image.

3. Click on the highlighted Split view button to go back to the regular view of Excel like the image shown here.

This will make Excel go back to the regular view of Excel with single scroll bars. This will also allow you to scroll freely within this view.

Close Other Worksheets

Sometimes you may have multiple Excel spreadsheets open on your PC. Often this problem is ignored if you possibly have these worksheets opened on multiple monitors in your setup. You may have misclicked on a cell on another open spreadsheet.

In this case, Excel will assume that the other worksheet with a cell selected is the active window. And then you will be limited to editing that one cell on the opened Excel file when you are working with another file in reality.

If you have a cell selected in another opened Spreadsheet, Excel may throw a tantrum and will not let you scroll in another spreadsheet. To avoid such problems with your work, just do a double check to make sure that you have no other cells selected in another worksheet opened. If you do, then click on your active workbook to make sure that the workbook you wish to work on is selected. Now, you should be able to scroll in your Excel workbook.

Check Your Keyboard and Mouse

Finally, If all else fails, perhaps this is a problem with your mouse or keyboad. As we have pointed out in some of the sections above, it might be that your mouse and keyboard are causing problems. Although this is highly unlikely. But it is best practice to double check with another mouse and keyboard if you have any spare at hand.

If you are using a wireless mouse and keyboard you may try and change the batteries to check if that helps or not.

Finishing words

In this guide, we have discussed all the possible reasons your Excel may not let you scroll. Often time excel will not let you scroll within your file because of bad formatting, or just because some options are hidden or disabled in your excel.

Before tinkering with your Excel file itself, just go through our guide carefully to find out all the possible reasons and solutions for your excel not scrolling. And be sure to let us know in the comments below which of these solutions worked for you.

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