How To Get Around “The Selected Cells Are Read-Only” When Pasting Into A Datasheet View…

Posted on 2014/05/20 | 4 Comments

I ran into an issue when trying to paste data into a datasheet view:

All my columns seemed to be fine, and I know I had pasted items before. So I did a little research, and found it was a problem with multi-line text fields that were set for Enhanced Rich Text:

If you have a column in the datasheet view that is set to Enhanced Rich Text, you get the read-only error. If I change that to Rich Text (or Plain Text), then I can paste in the new information with no problem.

Recording it here so I’ll remember it later. 🙂

This entry was posted in SharePoint 2010. Bookmark the permalink.

4 responses to “How To Get Around “The Selected Cells Are Read-Only” When Pasting Into A Datasheet View…”

Fred | 2014/10/23 at 3:56 am | Reply

The problem is the column cannot be edited or deleted once this is set…
Denise | 2015/04/07 at 1:20 pm | Reply

For me, it seems to be all of the Person or group and TCC notify columns that get the read only error listed above. To determine this I tried pasting data into each field individually. The person/group/tcc notify columns were coming up as read only and wouldn’t let me paste anything into them. I am using SharePoint 2010 in datasheet view.
JD_Shep | 2016/06/27 at 10:06 am | Reply

Thank you!
Scott | 2016/12/13 at 4:01 pm | Reply

Thanks for the information.

Came in handy.