Excel Freeze Top Row
Excel Freeze Top Row: a reader asks…
I use Excel once a year when I do taxes but can never remember how to show a table where the top row is always there as you scroll down the page. Is there a simple answer?
Over the years Microsoft has continued to change their menu system, and it seems like commands migrate around the ribbon controls. But yes, you can easily set Excel to automatically freeze the top row or however many rows or columns you’d like as you scroll through a spreadsheet.
Using the Excel Ribbon, look at the View ribbon, and you’ll see the Freeze Panes option which is a drop-down list. you have three options: Freeze Panes, Freeze Top Row, and Freeze First Column. Once you select one or more of those, the menu changes to “Unfreeze…”. The 2nd and 3rd menu items are pretty self-explanatory, you can just freeze the top row or the first column so that when you scroll down or to the right, the first row or column remains on-screen. Note that you cannot select both of these, for that you need the first menu entry – Freeze Panes.
This first entry lets you freeze either or both row(s) and column(s). It’s just a little trickier to do. The way you do this is to place your cursor in the cell that is at the top and left of the part of the spreadsheet table that you want to be able to scroll, then click Freeze Panes>Freeze Panes to lock that. Then when you scroll down or to the right, whatever rows and columns were above and to the left of that cell position will remain on-screen and everything else scrolls. Pretty slick!
Now if you wanted to do the same thing, but instead do this on a printout of your spreadsheet, then read my article Printing Excel 2013 Column Titles. It’s just a bit dated, but still works in the latest version of Excel.
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Author: Chris Gardner
Your Tech Coach at PosiTek.net
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