Full Guide to the Status Bar in Excel + Customization (2024)

Do you know where is the status bar in Excel? If not, then this guide is made just for you. If your answer is yes, then there are still interesting things to learn about it 😀

The Excel status bar may just be a little bar found at the bottom of the Excel Window but it tells you different kinds of useful information. Plus, it’s customizable!

This article is your ultimate guide about the Excel status bar where you’ll learn how to use it and how to customize it to your advantage. Let’s dive in 🥽

What is the status bar in Excel?

When you open Excel, you can see the status bar at the very bottom of the Excel window. It’s a little bar you see just below the worksheet tab bar.

From its name, you can understand that it will tell you the STATUS and other useful information about the current worksheet of your active workbook.

If you don’t have any data in your cells yet, you’ll see the cell mode, different worksheet views, and the zoom slider in your status bar👀

For the cell modes, the following modes are displayed in the status bar:

• Ready – indicates a general state.
• Enter – indicates content entry mode. It is displayed when you select a cell and start typing, or when you press F2 twice.
• Edit – indicates in-cell editing mode. It is displayed when you double-click a cell with data, or when you press F2 so that you can edit data in a cell.
• Point – indicates formula cell selection mode. It is displayed when you start a formula and then click the cell reference that you want to include in the formula.

For the worksheet views, you have the following:

• Normal view
• Page layout view
• Page Break preview

You also have the Zoom in and Zoom out buttons and the Zoom slider in between them 🔍

The current zoom level of the worksheet is shown beside the zoom slider. When you also click it, the zoom dialog box appears.

The status bar displays more options when you have data in your cells. This applies when you select cells with numerical values.

When you select the cells, it will show you default options like Average, Sum, and Count.

That way, when you need to do a quick sum or an average, you can simply select the cells and see the results on the status bar.

In addition to that, you can choose to display Numerical Count, Maximum, or Minimum data, aside from the default Average, Sum, and Count.

All you have to do is to add them to your Excel status bar 😊

Status bar options: add/remove features

You can customize your status bar to show you the information you need. To customize it, all you need to do is right-click on it.

Here you will see all the options in your status bar both enabled ✅ and not.

A lot of options are already enabled by default like the Flash Fill Blank and Changed cells, Sensitivity, End mode, Fixed decimal and so much more.

To enable an item, all you have to do is click on it.

For instance, you would like the status bar to show you if the Caps lock or the Num lock is active. Just right-click the status bar and select the Caps lock and Num lock to check the options ✅

Once done, you’ll see them on the left side of the status bar 😊

Whenever you hit the Num or Caps lock keys on your keyboard, the status bar shows you that.

The Scroll lock is another option similar to them but the scroll lock option is already enabled by default.

You can always add more features that are useful for you.

For example, add the sheet number or the workbook statistics. Once you click on them, you will immediately see them in your status bar, along with others.

The Overtype mode, Macro Recording, and Accessibility Checker are only a few more features you can add to your status bar.

Remove features

Removing features follow the same procedure as adding them.

All you have to do is to right-click the status bar and disable any of the options you’ve added.

For example, let’s disable all the features we’ve added previously: Caps Lock, Num Lock, Sheet number, and Workbook statistics.

To remove them, just right-click on the status bar and click on each of them. This will uncheck the features. And you won’t be seeing them in the status bar anymore.

How to fix a missing status bar

If you open an excel file and your status bar is missing like this, what do you do?

In the earlier versions of Excel, there used to be a way to show or hide your status bar. But if you have the newer versions of Excel (Excel 2007 and later), you can show or hide your status bar using Excel VBA macro.

Don’t worry. Here’s a quick step-by-step tutorial on how to fix your missing status bar 😊

1. Press Alt + F11 on your keyboard. This opens the Microsoft Visual Basic Editor window.

2. Press Ctrl + G. The Immediate window opens in the Visual Basic Editor.

3. Type the following into the Immediate window. You can also copy it from here and paste it into the window.

Application.DisplayStatusBar = True

4. Press Enter.

5. Finally, Press Alt + Q.

The Visual Basic Editor closes, and you are returned to your Excel worksheet.

Ta-da! Your status bar is back 😀

That’s it – Now what?

Your status on learning about the Excel status bar is DONE 👍 Clearly, the Status bar is a helpful feature that shows you basic information about your workbook.

Not only that it provides you easy access to worksheet views and zoom features, but it also provides the numeric values for the count, average, and sum data without having to calculate them one by one 😊

Make the status bar in Excel work for you by customizing it to display different information you want to quickly see and access in Excel.

Did the Excel VBA macro surprise you earlier? Well, there’s more where that came from. Excel macros help you do 50 things with just a single click. This can truly help you automate your workflow (and a whole lot more)! 🚀

Join my free 30-minute video course and get started with macros (for beginners).

Other resources

Learning doesn’t stop. Just like the status bar, you can customize your Quick Access Toolbar in Excel. Learn QAT Customizations here.

I hope this was helpful! 👋