Technomummy

Posted By technomummy on June 13, 2009

Using Excel to work on large spreadsheets can get confusing, when you scroll down to the bottom of the page – and lose your headings as they scroll off the top! Here’s the solution – it’s called “freeze panes”. In Excel 2007:

• Go to the View tab on the ribbon.
• Click on the Freeze Panes button, and you’ll see three options:
  1. Freeze Panes: this will “freeze” the rows above and columns to the left of the current cell. So say your sheet has two rows of headings (that’s rows 1&2), and one column of names down the left hand side (that’s column A). So you would click on cell B3 and choose Freeze Panes. This would keep rows 1&2 and column A always visible, no matter which way you scroll.
  2. Freeze Top Row freezes the top row, obviously, and
  3. Freeze First Column freezes the leftmost column.

Note that each of these options also has a little picture next to it, showing which rows/columns will be frozen:

The Freeze Panes menu dropdown

And that’s it! Now your spreadsheets can be as big as you like, and you’ll always be able to see your row and column headings.

Category: Excel 2007
Tags: Excel, spreadsheets, Tips