How to fix scrollbar in excel to get rid of extra empty rows?

In Excel 2003, sometimes Excel shows a large amount of blank rows and empty columns that was previously deleted, and somehow the scrollbar thinks there’s still data when there isn’t any.

Some users find this annoying, but sometimes it affects usability especially when the scrollbar gets too thin due to the excessive amount of rows / columns.

To get Excel 2003 to stop showing all the empty rows:

  1. Press Cntrl+End to see which cell Excel acknowledges as the last non-empty cell in the file. Sometimes a cell is hidden deep into the file. If this is the problem you’re done. If not, continue.
  2. Highlight the rows to be deleted. Not the cells, but the entire row.
  3. Right click, and press delete.
  4. Notice that the scroll bar is still the same.
  5. Click on the Cell A1
  6. Save the workbook

The same apply to columns.

This problem does seem to be solved in Excel 2010. The scrollbar fixes itself when the file is saved regardless of which cell is selected.

 

16 thoughts on “How to fix scrollbar in excel to get rid of extra empty rows?

  1. AGK says:

    Awesome! I use Excel 2010 and found that the last by mistake there was a cell that had some content in it (inadvertently pressing Ctrl+End+some letter). I deleted it (still had the large scroll bar – but once saved and reopened, it returned to normal size scroll bar.

  2. Karen says:

    Just to inform you, under excel 2010 (x64) it happens as well (W7). None of the above worked (it kept saying that cel AAA104095 was a problem, but neither deleting cells, nor rows or columns helped. They were simply replaced by new ones. However, copying the datafields into a new sheet did do the trick!

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