🤯 50% Off! 700+ courses, assessments, and books
Browse Titles
JavaScript

How to Remove Textarea Scrollbars in IE

    Craig Buckler
    Share

    This is possibly the quickest CSS tip I’ve ever posted, but who wants complex tutorials on a Friday! When you’re using a form textarea, Internet Explorer always shows a scrollbar even when it’s unnecessary…

    IE textarea scrollbar

    A scrollbar doesn’t appear in Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera. It’s pointless and a little ugly too — especially when the textarea is surrounded by standard input boxes. It never really bothered me: I just assumed that’s what IE did and never questioned it further.

    The fix seems blindingly obvious now:

    
textarea
{
	overflow: auto;
}

    It’s as simple as that. A scrollbar will only appear when the content in the textarea exceeds the space available. It works in IE6, 7 and 8 — view a demonstration.

    Please accept my apologies if you’ve been doing this for many years, but it’s one of those useful little CSS tricks which must have passed me by! I hope it helps someone.