in the toolbox/menu for numbers and pages over 50% of the choices are light gray and do not work why

Hey there,

Grayed out buttons, menu choices, and other elements show that they are unavailable, usually due to other choices you made that conflict with what action you are trying to perform. If an element is grayed out, it is a way of indicating that it won’t work and that is intentional. Apple usually uses these in their operating systems to show that an option exists but is unavailable.

Hope I helped.

"Grayed out" is used to signify the option is not available at that particular time or in the particular context you are in at the time.

In general in Numbers and Pages it would generally suggest you have not selected an area, option or region in Pages or Numbers that can have that particular option in the menu applied to it or used at that time.

For example, if you are currently editing the header or footer in a Pages document, options such as comment or add page will not be available and will appear grayed out.

Shazbut1 wrote:

grayed out menu choices do not function why?

try shutting down and restarting the machine...