Freeze Panes for Scrolling

To keep an area of a worksheet visible while you scroll to another area of the worksheet, go to the View tab, where you can Freeze Panes to lock specific rows and columns in place, or you can Split panes to create separate windows of the same worksheet.

Working with a massive data set in a spreadsheet can be difficult, especially as you scroll up/down or left/right and the rows and columns may be hard to track. There's a simple trick for that if you've got a header row or column, where the first row/column has a descriptor. You freeze it so when you scroll, that row and/or column (or multiple rows and/or columns) don't move.

 

View tab, Freeze Panes menu

 

Freeze the first column

  • Select View > Freeze Panes > Freeze First Column. A faint line will appear between Column A and B showing the first column is frozen.

 

Freeze the first two columns

  • Select the third column.

  • Select View > Freeze Panes > Freeze Panes. When you scroll to the right on your worksheet, the first two columns will remain frozen.

 

Freeze columns and rows

  • Select the cell below the rows and to the right of the columns you want to keep visible when you scroll.

Example: If you freeze the panes around cell C4, rows 1-3 and columns A-B will be frozen as you scroll as shown below

Panes that are frozen

  • Select View > Freeze Panes > Freeze Panes.

 

Unfreeze rows or columns

  • On the View tab > Window > Unfreeze Panes.

    Unfreeze Panes

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