Excel 2010 Bible

Chapter 3: Essential Worksheet Operations

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To freeze panes, start by moving the cell pointer to the cell below the row that you want to remain

visible while you scroll vertically, and to the right of the column that you want to remain visible

while you scroll horizontally. Then, choose View ➪ Window ➪ Freeze Panes and select the

Freeze Panes option from the drop-down list. Excel inserts dark lines to indicate the frozen rows

and columns. The frozen row and column remain visible while you scroll throughout the work-

sheet. To remove the frozen panes, choose View ➪ Window ➪ Freeze Panes, and select the

Unfreeze Panes option from the drop-down list.

Figure 3.8 shows a worksheet with frozen panes. In this case, rows 1:4 and column A are frozen in

place. This technique allows you to scroll down and to the right to locate some information while

keeping the column titles and the column A entries visible.

FIGURE 3.8

Freeze certain columns and rows to make them remain visible while you scroll the worksheet.

The vast majority of the time, you’ll want to freeze either the first row or the first column. The

View ➪ Window ➪ Freeze Panes drop-down list has two additional options: Freeze Top Row and

Freeze First Column. Using these commands eliminates the need to position the cell pointer before

freezing panes.

Tip
If you designated a range to be a table (by choosing Insert ➪ Tables ➪ Table), you may not even need to
freeze panes. When you scroll down, Excel displays the table column headings in place of the column letters.
Figure 3.9 shows an example. The table headings replace the column letters only when a cell within the table is
selected. n