Excel Insert Button is Disabled – Greyed Out – How To Enable It?

Enable Greyed Insert Button in Excel

Sometime the Row Insert or Column insert button get disabled/greyed out. Unsure of what happened. Here are few hints to bring it back.

Follow these simple steps to enable the Insert button in Excel.

1. Close all Microsoft Excel Applications
2. Press “Windows Key + R” & type “%appdata%\Microsoft\Excel”.
3. Rename the file Excelnn.xlb to Excelnn.anything

Now, open any Excel file, right click on any cell & check whether the Insert button is enabled.

Note: This option works if the Excel file is not protected for editing. To know how to make a protected sheet to unprotected one refer this page.

Enable Insert Button from Options

If both the above options does not work, then try this alternate method.

1. Goto Excel File menu -> Options -> Advanced
2. Scroll to Cut,Copy, and Paste
3. Enable check box for Show Insert Options button
4. Scroll further down to “Display options for this Workbook”
5. Check combobox ‘All’ under ‘For Objects, Show’

These 2 options will work out.

Now again go to the Excel worksheet & check whether you are able to see the Insert button.