If you use a lot of long Excel spreadsheets, such as yearly records of purchases, then you may find yourself continually scrolling up to the top of the screen to remind yourself which column is which.
Did you know that you can simply use the freeze panes function to keep the first row (or more) on constant display at the top of the screen even as you scroll down through your spreadsheet? This feature can be incredibly handy for power users of mega spreadsheets, so here is how you enable it.
[themecolor]Activating freeze panes[/themecolor]
As shown in the screenshot above, it is a simple task to activate the Freeze Panes in the View section of the top ribbon.
- First go to the tabs at the top of the page.
- Then go to “View”
- Lastly go to “Freeze Panes”
Now, from here you have 3 options to choose from.
The first is to ‘Freeze Panes’ which will simple freeze whatever panes are highlighted at the time of selection. This is useful if you have very specific areas of the spreadsheet that you need to freeze.
The second option is to freeze the top row which is ideal for a spreadsheet whose top row provides a description of the contents of each column. This function keeps the top row in place no matter how far down the spreadsheet you scroll.
The third option is to freeze the first column, which will be useful for spreadsheets whose first column contains key information about the contents of each row.
