I think you're refering to Excel Outlining.

Are there buttons in the gray area that contain a plus sign or a minus sign?
When you click on the plus sign, hidden rows unhide.
Clicking on the minus sign hides grouped rows.

It that is your situation, see "outlining" in Excel Help.

If you want to remove all of the outlining...
From the Excel main menu:
<data<grouping and outlining<clear outline

Does that help?
***********
Regards,
Ron

XL2002, WinXP


"greg november" wrote:

I have 8 colums , 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 to the left of the spreadsheet. Greyed out
and undeletable. WHat are they and how do I use them, delete them please?