How To Freeze Columns and Rows In Excel

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Excel is one essential tool for many users. We use it to audit, to calculate, to show data charts and even to keep a track of our monthly expenditure also. While we are working on thousands of data sometimes there is a really big problem occurs. It becomes difficult for us to compare similar kind of data (like ‘Expenditure’ and ‘Savings’ beside of one another) residing at the end of the sheet. Let it be vertical or horizontal data, it really becomes a mess if we do need to go home each time. Microsoft Excel’s freeze pane feature is here to solve this issue.

With the freeze pane option, you can freeze a row/column to make it visible all the time at the top of the page. It becomes sort of like a sticky row (like our website’s navigation) and gives an ease of access.

 

There are some limitations of freeze pane options also.

  1. We can only freeze from the top row.
  2. Only First Column can be frozen.
  3. We cannot freeze both Top Row and First Column together.

Now without any further ado let’s check how we can use that feature to advantage.

 

  1. First, we need to select the row right below of the rows/row we want to freeze. See in the example that we want to freeze row number 1 to 7 so we need to select the 8th row in this case.

Freeze Rows In Excel Step 1

 

  1. Then we have to go to VIEW TAB right next to REVIEW TAB.
  2. Click on Freeze Panes drop down and choose the “Freeze Panes” option from the drop-down.

 

Freeze Rows In Excel Step 2

 

And presto! We have frozen 7 rows. That is all we have to do for freezing rows in excel. Now those rows 1-7 will act as a sticky row they will keep frozen on the top. Now we can easily understand what is the meaning of the value even at the end of our excel sheets.

Freeze Rows In Excel Step 3

Freeze Rows In Excel Step 4

 

 

Yes we have seen it all, right?

Wrong! We still have some work to do and some knowledge to share.

Now we will see how to freeze an entire column when you scroll horizontally. Many of us work in many scenarios maybe this one scenario will be helpful for many people.

  1. This one is simple enough. Go to VIEW TAB
  2. Click on Freeze Panes drop down and choose the “Freeze First Column” option from the drop-down.

 

Freeze Rows In Excel Step 5

  1. And we are done freezing the column. Now we can horizontally scroll your heart’s content (:P).

Freeze Rows In Excel Step 5.1

And one last thing is unfreezing the rows or columns we have just frozen now. We cannot unfreeze one or two rows and keep the rest. We have to unfreeze all the frozen panes at once.

For that simply go to Freeze Panes in View Tab and click on Unfreeze Panes. It will unfreeze everything in the sheet.

how to freeze columns and rows in excel 6

 

There is one other option in the Freeze Panes options also. You can click on the “Freeze Top Row,” which will freeze the top row that is currently visible on the screen. Word of advice “Freeze Top Row” will freeze only the top VISIBLE row not the top row of your table.

In our example, the row number 7 will be the frozen row.

how to freeze columns and rows in excel 7

how to freeze columns and rows in excel 8

 

We have covered freezing and unfreezing of rows or columns in this topic. This feature of MS-Excel definitely helped me a lot while I use it on my monthly budget calculation. I think you will also be helpful with this neat feature of MS Excel. Your important data will always be in your view whether you are working at the start of the Excel Sheet or at the bottom.

 


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Prince

Prince

Prince is a blooming blogger and a lead tester at TactfulMinds, an in–depth and detailed tech review blog. He works as a software engineer having sound knowledge on web designing, development and data management. He is a tech enthusiast, a passionate gamer and above all a complete nerd.

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