Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 29, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
Don likes to use the Context menus that appear when he right-clicks on a cell. Once the Context menu is visible, he can press a shortcut key of whichever command he wants to perform. (The shortcut key is the underlined letter for each option on the Context menu.) The problem is that the Context menu has two items that use the same shortcut key: Copy and Create List. Since he never uses the Create List option, Don would love to get rid of it completely, so that only the Copy command is initiated by the C shortcut key.
The only way to change the Context menus is through a macro. The code to perform such a change is identical to the code used for other menus or command bars. There is a huge discussion (much too big for this tip) on how to make these types of changes in the Microsoft Knowledge Base, at this address:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/830502
Additional information, specific to Context menus (what Microsoft confusingly calls Shortcut menus), can be found in this Knowledge Base article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/213209
While there is a wealth of information in these two articles, the actual code to modify the Context menu that appears when you right-click a cell is relatively simple. In fact, it can be boiled down to a single-line macro:
Sub RemoveCreateList()
Application.CommandBars("Cell").Controls("Create List...").Delete
End Sub
Run the macro, and the Create List item is gone. You could remove any other item from the menu by simply replacing the "Create List..." text with the exact wording of the menu item you want to remove. When you later want to restore the menu, you run another single-line macro to reset it:
Sub ResetMenu()
Application.CommandBars("Cell").Reset
End Sub
Note:
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (3089) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.
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2018-08-27 09:28:49
Hi there, I have two excel files in Excel 2013. When I right click in the one file I get a context menu with "Exclude From Print Area" in it [3rd from the bottom] but when I right click on the other Excel file the context menu does not have the option "Exclude From Print Area". Why is this different between the two files.
2017-09-23 16:20:06
Eric
Thanks for this tip! It worked like a charm to get rid of some annoying options a 3rd-party Excel Add-In added on install, but didn't add on delete.
2016-04-08 16:48:24
Stan Z
Allen, This remove context from menu tip is almost what I was looking but would want the ability to add custom ribbon features similar to the copy clipboard and then pin useful ones. Ideally, The shortcut ribbon is useful to put frequently used features easy to access. Is there an app/ feature to make a custome excel ribbon available during right clicks? Thanks for your time.
R,
Stan
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