Excel is designed to save you time by providing you with the right tools to organize, format, and calculate data in a spreadsheet. But how can you do that if the toolbar isn’t working?

Sometimes, the toolbar is all grayed out, certain buttons aren’t working, or you can’t seem to find what you’re looking for. Fortunately, you can get the toolbar working again by going through the steps below.

1. Check Your Office Subscription

If you open Excel or any other Microsoft 365 app and the toolbar is grayed out and unresponsive, there’s a chance that your subscription has expired. Usually, Microsoft 365 will display a window asking you to buy a new subscription.

If you’re confident that you don’t need a new subscription, you’ll need to do more than spend a few bucks on a Microsoft 365 license.

2. Update Excel

If you’re using an older Excel version, it may be incompatible with your operating system, leading to the inability to use the toolbar, among other issues. Here's how you can Excel to the latest available version:

  1. Launch Excel and click the File tab.
  2. Click More > Your Account.
  3. Open the Update options menu and select Update now.
update now option in Excel

3. Repair Microsoft 365

Instead of trying to pin down the exact cause of your problem, you can have Microsoft solve the problem for you. Here’s how you can do it on a Windows computer. Before doing so, close any running Microsoft 365 apps.

  1. Right-click the Start button and select Settings.
  2. Go to Apps > Apps & features.
  3. Click the three-dot icon next to Microsoft 365 > Modify.
  4. In the pop up window, select Quick repair.
  5. Click Repair to start the process.
Repair Microsoft 365

If this wasn’t enough to fix the problem, there’s one more option you could try. Go through the above steps again, but this time, select Online repair.

4. Delete Toolbar Customizations

As you may know, Excel allows you to customize the toolbar. But if you’ve taken the customization process a bit too far, you might have the feeling that the toolbar isn’t working anymore. In this case, you should revert it to its default settings.

  1. Go to File > More > Options.
  2. From the left-hand menu, select Customize Ribbon.
  3. Below Customize the Ribbon, select All Tabs.
  4. Click the Reset button and confirm the action.
Reset toolbar customization

5. Start Excel in Safe Mode

If you still can’t use the Excel toolbar after updating it, you should try to start Excel in Safe Mode. This allows you to run the app without any extra features, so you can easier identify the source of the problem.

On a Windows computer, press the Windows key + R to open a Run dialog. Then, type excel /safe and press Enter. To confirm the action, check if Excel displays (Safe Mode) next to the spreadsheet name.

On a Mac, you have to boot the entire system into Safe Mode before accessing Excel, before accessing Excel. With Excel in Safe Mode, you can figure out if there’s an add-in that’s causing you the issue.

  1. Open the File menu.
  2. Head to More > Options.
  3. From the left pane, click Add-ins.
  4. At the bottom of the window, set Manage to Disabled items and click Go.
    Troubleshoot Excel in safe mode
  5. Excel will show you a list of installed add-ins. Enable them one by one to find the problematic one.
  6. Remove the malfunctioning add-in.
  7. Close Excel to exit Safe Mode.
  8. Start Excel as usual and check if the problem is now solved.

6. Rename the Toolbar File

If the inability to fix the toolbar is caused by a corrupt file, you should force Excel to build a new toolbar when it restarts.

Do a search for %AppData%\Microsoft\Excel. Then, open the folder and look for Excel15.xlb or Excel.xlb file. The name varies according to your Microsoft 365 version. Rename the file and restart your computer.

Get Back Excel Toolbar Functionality

Hopefully, one or more of the mentioned solutions helped you fix the Excel toolbar. But if nothing works, you can reinstall Microsoft 365.

No matter what you try, there’s a chance you’re still dealing with a broken toolbar if you’re using pirated software. If this is the case, you should reconsider your choice.