MT5 Toolbox not showing: five fixes

The Trade and History tabs vanished? The Toolbox panel is usually just hidden, squashed or off screen. Here is how to bring it back.

What the Toolbox is

The Toolbox is the panel at the bottom of the MetaTrader 5 terminal that holds your open positions, your closed-trade history and the logs. It is where you see the Trade tab with balance and equity, the History tab with closed positions, and the Experts and Journal tabs where the platform and your robots write their messages. When it disappears, a trader loses the account figures and the history in one go, which is why “MT5 Toolbox not showing” is a common search.

Some builds and some third-party guides call the same panel the Terminal or Tools window, and the exact tab names can differ by build and broker. The steps below describe the usual desktop layout; check your own terminal if a name does not match.

Fix 1: press Ctrl+T

The quickest fix is the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+T, which toggles the Toolbox. Click once on the main chart area first so that the terminal has focus, then press the shortcut. If nothing appears, press it again: the first press may have hidden a panel that was open but collapsed to a thin strip.

Fix 2: use the View menu

Open the View menu in the top bar and look for Toolbox. A tick next to it means the panel is on. Click it to switch it on. If the View menu does not list it under that name, look for an entry such as Terminal or Tools, which some builds use.

Fix 3: the panel is there but squashed

Sometimes the Toolbox exists but has been dragged so low that only its title bar shows. Hover over the border between the chart area and the bottom strip until the cursor changes to a double arrow, then drag upward. The panel can also be undocked into a floating window and moved off screen, particularly after changing monitors. Double-clicking its title bar usually re-docks it.

Fix 4: the window is on a monitor you no longer use

If you disconnected a second screen, a floating Toolbox can sit outside the visible area. Switching the layout back, or reconnecting the screen, brings it back. If that is not possible, closing and reopening the terminal usually restores it to the main window.

Fix 5: the panel is on but a tab is missing

A missing tab is a different problem. Right-click in the panel header to see which tabs are offered. The History tab can look empty even when the panel is fine, because it only shows the period selected for it. Right-click inside History and pick a longer period such as the last month or all history. The full set of reasons is in MT5 trade history not showing, and the layout of the tabs is covered in the Journal tab explained.

Which tab holds what

Tab names and order vary by build. Treat the table as a map, not a specification.

Resetting the layout

If the whole workspace looks wrong, the terminal keeps its window layout in a profile. Switching to another profile from the File menu, or loading a default one, often restores a missing panel. Before you do that, remember that profiles also hold your chart arrangement, so save a profile you like under its own name.

A worked example (hypothetical)

A trader opens MT5 after a Windows update and the bottom of the screen shows only charts. Ctrl+T does nothing at first because the terminal does not have focus. After clicking on a chart and pressing it again, a thin strip appears. Dragging the border upward restores the Trade tab. The History tab then shows no trades from last week; right-clicking and choosing a custom period fixes that too. Total time: about two minutes, and no data was ever lost, because the history lives on the broker’s server and the terminal only displays it.

Your history is not stored in the panel

It is worth remembering that hiding the Toolbox does not delete anything. The trade history comes from your broker’s server and is shown in the panel on demand. AI Trading Journal reads that history from your own MetaTrader 5 terminal on your PC, keeps a journal file on the same PC and adds new closed trades every 5 minutes, so a missing panel does not stop the sync as long as the terminal is running. The app is read-only: it never places, modifies or closes a trade. See how to track MT5 trades automatically for the options.

Limits of this page

• Menu names and shortcuts can differ between builds, brokers and languages.
• It covers the desktop terminal for Windows, not the phone or web versions.
• It cannot diagnose a terminal that crashes or fails to log in; for that, see your broker’s support.

Once the Toolbox is back, follow how to open trade history on MetaTrader 5 to pick the right period and view.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

• A local trading journal for MT5
• P&L calendar for MT5
• Trade notes, ratings and screenshots
• Trading progress and goals
• Back up your journal and move it to a new PC
• An offline trading journal for Windows
• How to set monthly trading goals
• Import your whole MT5 history
• How to tag trades
• Trade screenshots for your journal
• All trading journal comparisons