Excel grays out menu commands for unavailable features or functions. To unlock the grayed-out menus, first review the most common causes, then take the steps necessary make the menu active.

To lock specific cells in Excel, select all cells in the sheet, then hold the Ctrl key and highlight the ones you want to protect. This will deselect them from the current selection.

With the list selected, you’re ready to enable data validation as follows: Choose Validation from the Data menu to display the Data Validation dialog box. Click the Settings tab.

How to create an interactive dashboard in Microsoft Excel Now that you have a basic idea about interactive dashboards in Microsoft Excel, let’s check them out in action.

Restoring the drag-and-drop menu in your Excel Pivot Table is typically a quick fix. By using either right-click options or ribbon commands, you can easily access the field list again. If all else ...

From the dropdown menu that appears, select the Freeze Panes option. Excel will automatically insert a thin line to show the separation between locked and unlocked rows.

Click the Crop button, hover the cursor over Crop to Shape, and select a shape from the menu. The picture is converted to the shape you have selected. Launch Microsoft Excel.

Select the columns with the figures, not the header information, then the Transform menu item, and click Unpivot Columns — or right-click one of the columns and select Unpivot Columns.