Controlling Display of the Status Bar

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 19, 2019)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

The status bar is the area at the bottom of the Excel window which indicates information about the current spreadsheet. If you need more room to view a spreadsheet, or you don't need the information provided by the status bar, you can turn it off. To control display of the status bar, follow these steps:

  1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. You will see the Options dialog box.
  2. Make sure the View tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)

    3. Figure 1. The View tab of the Options dialog box.

  3. Click on the Status Bar check box. If the check box is selected, then the status bar will be displayed; if not selected, it will not be displayed.
  4. Click on OK.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2643) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Adding Excel Information to a Web Page

Besides saving a worksheet as a complete Web page, you can also save smaller portions of your data to an existing Web ...

Discover More

Switching Headers in a Frozen Row

Excel allows you to "freeze" rows in your worksheet. What if you want the rows that are frozen to change as you scroll ...

Discover More

Understanding Auto-Population of Cells

Auto-population of your formulas can be a useful tool when you are adding data to your worksheets. It would be even more ...

Discover More

Excel Smarts for Beginners! Featuring the friendly and trusted For Dummies style, this popular guide shows beginners how to get up and running with Excel while also helping more experienced users get comfortable with the newest features. Check out Excel 2019 For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Resizing a Text Box in a Macro

Text boxes are easy to add to a document and manually resize, as needed. If you want to resize the text box in a macro, ...

Discover More

Non-Tiled Background Pictures

Background images for a worksheet are automatically repeated over and over (tiled) by Excel. This tip describes a ...

Discover More

Setting Default Attributes for Lines and Arrows

Don't like the way that Excel formats lines and arrows? You can easily make your own formatting changes, and then use ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 6 + 4?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)

This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.

Links and Sharing
OUR COMPANY
OUR PRODUCTS
OUR SITES
 

Copyright © 2026 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.