Troubleshooting No Scroll Bar in Internet Explorer: Quick Fixes

Overview

The scroll bar problems with IE are way too common, and you may often see grayed out horizontal scroll bar appearing on web pages where it may be totally irrelevant. On other occasions, you may see the vertical scroll bar disappear after switching into landscape mode.

I’ve usually observed that these issues prevail in older versions of IE, and IE8 is fairly improved, and I haven’t encountered these issues in the latest version of Internet Explorer.

Quick Fixes

Some of these problems may be specific to the browser version of the Internet Explorer, and there are several quick fixes available for such browser-specific issues. On the other hand, there may be website-specific issues, which may be rectified by modifying the CSS code of the website.

Realign the Screen to Get Rid of Vertical Scroll Bar Problems

If you’ve issues with vertical scroll bar in IE, you may try realigning the screen.

To do so, you need to go to path - Start\Settings\System\Screen and make the necessary change.

Remember, this is just a hit-and-trial work around and it is not certain that you’ll be able to resolve the issue by realigning the screen all the time. Nevertheless, it is a common quick fix that helps in most cases!

Dealing with Grayed Out Horizontal Scroll Bars

If you often see the grayed out horizontal bar on web pages where it is not expected to be present, you can get rid of that annoying scrollbar by inserting the following piece of code snippet into the HTML code of the website (of course, only if you’re the website owner).

Alternatively, you can alter the CSS code of the website, without dealing with JavaScript –

CSS:

Code:

body

{

width: 99.9999%;

margin: 0%;

padding: 0%;

overflow: auto; //automatic overflow adjusts the width accordingly and prevents the grayed out horizontal scroll bar from appearing

}

Work-Around for Different Versions of IE

Dealing with IE7 Scroll Bar Issues

You may face scroll bar issues in different versions of IE, due to varied reasons and there are fixes specific to that version of IE.

In case, you’re facing issues with ONLY IE7, try using IE7 Pro (a free add-on) to fix the issue, or you may try adding this declaration in the beginning of the HTML code of the website -

Dealing with IE5 and IE6 Scroll Bar Issues

Nowadays, not too many people are bothered to fix IE5 and IE6 issues, so upgrading to IE7 or IE8 may be recommendable to rectify issues in older versions of the browser.

Dealing with IE8 Scroll Bar Issues

IE8 seems to be full of troubles, especially the scroll bar problems. If you’re using IE8, then be it “no scroll bar problem in Internet Explorer” or some other issue, you must try to find out the source of trouble by initially disabling all the add-ons and running IE in no add-on mode, and then enable each add-on one at a time, monitor the behavior of the browser and find out the add-on or plug-in responsible for causing the trouble.

Horizontal Scrollbar Bug in IE 8 Beta Version - Does Microsoft Really Care?

Several users have reported the “Horizontal Scrollbar bug” in IE 8 beta, but MS has bluntly turned it down stating that they could never reproduce it (as though they can’t see grayed out horizontal scrollbars with open eyes).

Later on, it has been fixed in the stable release of IE 8, and it looks like Microsoft has found a few work-arounds too, so as to ensure that at least users can’t report such bugs on www.microsoft.com (earlier almost every user used to report bugs on www.microsoft.com, which was indeed quite shameful for MS).

Need More Help?

If nothing works, you can try viewing the web page in full screen mode by pressing F11. In full screen, you won’t realize the missing horizontal scroll bar.

You may also want to take a look at the Internet Explorer excessive memory usage problems and its remedies here.

Here’s some more help if you’ve been encountering frequent IE7 crashes.