Excel Troubleshooting: Certain Commands Like Delete Are Greyed Out
Symptoms
In Excel, you right click on a cell or anywhere in a sheet to apply a certain command, such as "Delete", but it is greyed out and therefore non-clickable.
Resolution
- Check if any worksheets are grouped. If so, ungroup them and try again:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/group-worksheets-4e1f7747-3d63-4fd7-8a36-838b05adc0f0 - Check if the corresponding file is shared. If so, turn off sharing:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/about-the-shared-workbook-feature-49b833c0-873b-48d8-8bf2-c1c59a628534 - Try disabling any 3rd party COM add-ins. They might cause such unexpected issues.
- In Excel, navigate through "File > Options > Add-ins > Manage: COM Add-ins > Go...".
- Uncheck/disable all add-ins there.
- Click OK.
- Repair Office. First try a quick repair. If it doesn't help, also perform an online repair.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/repair-an-office-application-7821d4b6-7c1d-4205-aa0e-a6b40c5bb88b - Rebuild/recreate the Excel configuration file.
- Close all Excel windows.
- Launch Run dialog box (press Windows key + R).
- Type the following text in there and click OK.
%appdata%/Microsoft/Excel - In the opened folder, find any files named "Excel**.xlb" and rename them like "Excel12.old", "Excel15.old", etc.
- Restart Excel.