To do this, click in the cell A6 (i.e the first row that should not be frozen) and choose the first option in the Freeze Panes drop-down menu (it's also called Freeze Panes). To freeze the heading row of the table, you will have to freeze the first five rows in the worksheet. If you look at the first screenshot in this lesson, you'll see that the first row doesn't actually contain the headings for the sales data table - it contains the title of this worksheet. Things get slightly more complicated if you want to freeze more than one row or column.
In the Mac version of Excel the options are the same, but you don't get the explanations of each option that you see here: The screenshot below is from Excel 2010 for Windows. If you wanted to freeze the first column, you would then go back and choose that option. When you click the Freeze Panes button, you can choose Freeze Top Row from the expanded Freeze Panes options. To freeze just one row, click the View menu, and find the Freeze Panes button (if you're using Excel 2011 for Mac, click the Layout menu to find the Freeze Panes button) Note that these steps also apply to freezing columns: You have two options for freezing panes in Excel.
The proces for doing this is slightly different between Excel 2010 for Windows and Excel 2011 for Mac, so I've covered both here: To solve the problem, you can freeze or lock the heading rows so that they don't disappear off the top of the screen as you scroll down the worksheet.This is a simple example, but it's not hard to imagine that with a lot more columns and rows, the problem would get considerably more complex,.Once you scroll down, however, the heading row disappears off the top of the screen, and you can no longer be sure what each column contains:.This example actually has 85 rows of data (the table carries on down further than this screenshot shows):.The worksheet contains daily data that reports the sales for each person in your sales team, broken down by products sold:
Imagine you have a spreadsheet that contains sales data for January. Why you might need to freeze rows or columns in your spreadsheet
This lesson explains how to freeze rows and columns (officially known as "Freeze Panes") in Excel 2010 for Windows and Excel 2011 for Mac. Trainees also have the option of joining our classes remotely via Zoom webinar.Īll trainees have the option of repeating their training (for free) for 12 months.When you are working with a large spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel, it's easy to find yourself scrolling down or across and losing track of where you are.
The Enrollment by Seminar worksheet is active and fills the window. Once you have arranged the worksheet windows, you can move between different windows simply by clicking the window in which you want to work.Ī copy of the worksheet window appears on top of the original, and the window number is referenced in the title bar.Īnother copy of the worksheet window appears and the window number is referenced in the title bar. Once you have more than one copy of your worksheet window open, you can select different worksheets to view from each worksheet window, and then arrange the windows to best suit your needs.įor example, Figure 1-5 displays four worksheets from the same workbook at once. You can arrange worksheets on your screen so that you can view them simultaneously. The worksheet is restored to a single pane, and the thin, dark lines are removed. The labels in column A remain stationary as you scroll to the right. If you apply both horizontal and vertical split bars, in which four panes are created, only two panes remain stationary when you scroll within one pane.įor example, if you horizontally scroll in the upper right pane, you simultaneously scroll through the lower right pane while the two left panes remain stationary.īecause each pane is a view of the same worksheet, a change in one pane means a change to the worksheet.īecause cell B5 was selected, the left pane is now selected.įreezing panes is useful when you are working with large tables because you can hold horizontal and vertical labels stationary while you move through the data. If you apply either a horizontal or vertical split bar, you can scroll within one pane while the other pane remains stationary.