How to create a text box with scrollbar in Excel?
Adding a text box in Excel allows you to display helpful notes or instructions directly alongside your worksheet data, making your spreadsheets clearer and more user-friendly. In certain situations, you may need to display a large amount of text while keeping your worksheet tidy and uncluttered. A text box with an integrated scrollbar is the ideal solution, providing convenient access to longer content without occupying excessive space. This keeps the worksheet visually organized and makes it easy for anyone viewing or editing your workbook to refer to extended information as needed.
Moreover, scrollable text boxes are especially valuable when creating forms, guides, or documentation within Excel, where compact design and readability are important. For example, you might use a scrollable text box to display terms and conditions, explanatory notes, or long comments attached to a specific section of your data. This approach not only enhances the worksheet’s appearance but also improves usability by allowing viewers to quickly scroll through content without expanding or resizing the text box.
Create a text box with scrollbar in Excel
Create a text box with scrollbar in Excel
In Microsoft Excel, you can create a scrollable text box by using the ActiveX Controls form. It’s important to note that scrollbars are not supported in regular Form Controls text boxes; only ActiveX text boxes can accommodate this functionality.
1. To begin, ensure the Developer tab is visible on your Excel ribbon. If you don’t see it, you may need to activate it first by right-clicking on the ribbon, selecting Customize the Ribbon, and then ticking the "Developer" checkbox. Once the tab is available, click Developer > Insert > Text Box (within the “ActiveX Controls” group), as shown below:
2. Place your cursor on the worksheet and drag to draw the text box to your preferred size. You can always resize it later by dragging its edges or corners. Make sure the text box is large enough to display introductory content, but small enough to make scrolling necessary for long entries.
3. With the text box still selected, access its properties by clicking Developer > Properties. This step lets you fine-tune text box features, including scrolling and multi-line support. If you have trouble selecting the text box, ensure that Design Mode is enabled in the Developer tab – you’ll need to toggle into Design Mode to select or modify ActiveX controls.
4. In the Properties dialog that appears, set the following options to enable vertical scrolling:
- Find the MultiLine property and select True from the dropdown. This allows the text box to display multiple lines of text, which is essential for scrolling large content.
- Next, locate the ScrollBars property and choose 2-fmScrollBarsVertical from the list. This will add a vertical scrollbar to the text box whenever the input exceeds its display area.
5. Once you have set these options, close the Properties dialog. Click Design Mode again on the Developer tab to exit design mode and enable interaction with the text box. Now, when you type or paste a large amount of text into this text box, a vertical scrollbar will appear automatically, allowing you to scroll through the entire content without changing the size of the text box. This provides a clean and efficient way to display extended information in a limited space.
Tips and Precautions: When using ActiveX text box controls, remember that these are not supported in the web (Excel Online) or Excel for Mac. ActiveX controls can also be affected by system security settings—if you experience issues, check your macro and ActiveX settings in Excel’s Trust Center. If the text box does not display a scrollbar when you enter more text, double-check that both MultiLine and ScrollBars options are properly configured and that the text box is an ActiveX control. You may need to re-enter Design Mode to make adjustments.
Note: Only text boxes added from the ActiveX Controls group (not the Form Controls group) can be assigned scrollbars in Excel. If you attempt to add a scrollbar to a standard text box, you will not find these property settings.
Related articles:
How to add a scrollbar to chart in Excel?
How to find and replace specific text in text boxes?
How to find and replace text in chart titles in Excel?
Best Office Productivity Tools
Supercharge Your Excel Skills with Kutools for Excel, and Experience Efficiency Like Never Before. Kutools for Excel Offers Over 300 Advanced Features to Boost Productivity and Save Time. Click Here to Get The Feature You Need The Most...
Office Tab Brings Tabbed interface to Office, and Make Your Work Much Easier
- Enable tabbed editing and reading in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Visio and Project.
- Open and create multiple documents in new tabs of the same window, rather than in new windows.
- Increases your productivity by 50%, and reduces hundreds of mouse clicks for you every day!
All Kutools add-ins. One installer
Kutools for Office suite bundles add-ins for Excel, Word, Outlook & PowerPoint plus Office Tab Pro, which is ideal for teams working across Office apps.
- All-in-one suite — Excel, Word, Outlook & PowerPoint add-ins + Office Tab Pro
- One installer, one license — set up in minutes (MSI-ready)
- Works better together — streamlined productivity across Office apps
- 30-day full-featured trial — no registration, no credit card
- Best value — save vs buying individual add-in