How to Freeze Rows and Columns in Microsoft Excel?

Working on Microsoft Excel is a daily activity that you undertake for your business. From minor reports to major sales data, for anything and everything you would need the assistance of MS Excel. Learn steps to Freeze Rows and Columns in Microsoft Excel.

In requisite of such crucial needs for your business, you need to know the complete knowledge about formatting options on MS Excel.

One of such important actions for formatting on MS Excel is freezing rows. This article will take you through a defining guide on how to Freeze Rows and Columns in Microsoft Excel.

Speaking of how to freeze rows in Excel, there are majorly four variants that fall under it:

• Freezing the Top Row/First Column.
• Freezing Multiple Rows.
• Freezing Several Columns.
• Freezing Horizontal and Vertical Headings at the Same Time.

Steps to Freeze Rows and Columns in Microsoft Excel

Thus, without further ado, let’s get each of the variants for freezing rows and columns in MS Excel:

1. Freezing The Top Row/First Column

Step 1: Open the respective MS Excel File.

Step 2: Go to the View Tab.

Step 3: Tap on the Windows Group.

Step 4: Select Freeze Panes to the drop-down arrow.

Step 5: To freeze the top row, choose Freeze Top Row. To freeze the top column, choose Freeze Top Column. A thin line would appear suggesting the area from where the frozen pane is starting.

2. Freezing Multiple Rows

Step 1: Choose the row which you find immediately beneath the last row which you wish to freeze.

Step 2: Go to the View Tab.

Step 3: Tap on the Windows Group.

Step 4: Tap on Freeze Panes drop-down.

Step 5: Choose Select Freeze Panes. A thin line would appear suggesting the area from where the frozen pane is starting.

3. Freezing Several Columns

Step 1: Choose the column which you find immediately beneath the last column which you wish to freeze.

Step 2: Go to the View Tab.

Step 3: Tap on the Windows Group.

Step 4: Tap on Freeze Panes drop-down.

Step 5: Choose Select Freeze Panes. A thin line would appear suggesting the area from where the frozen pane is starting.

4. Freezing Horizontal and Vertical Headings at The Same Time

Step 1: Choose the cell from the upper-left corner of the respective range that you wish to keep as scroll able.

Step 2: Go to the View Tab.

Step 3: Tap on the Windows Group.

Step 4: Tap on Freeze Panes drop-down.

Step 5: Choose Select Freeze Panes. A thin line would appear suggesting the area from where the frozen pane is starting.

If you do not wish to freeze rows in MS Excel, a simple alternative to that is split panes. Using split panes would lock the few areas of the sheet which you want to keep as frozen.

How to Use Split Panes in Microsoft Excel?

When using split panes, you don’t need to separately use freezing rows/columns functionality. It would have the same formatting appeal.

What happens in split panes is that it would divide the Excel window into 2 or 4 areas which you would be able to scroll separately. While you are scrolling within one particular area, the respective cells in the other area would remain to be fixed.

For using the split panes in MS Excel, here’s what needs to be done for the action execution:

Step 1: Open the respective MS Excel File.

Step 2: Choose a cell either on the right of the column or below the row to which you wish to split.

Step 3: Go to the View Tab.

Step 4: Tap on the Windows Group.

Step 5: Select the Split Button.

If you wish to undo the split panes, re-click on Split

Therefore, now hopefully, you would have a broader clarity on how to freeze rows in Excel. Now you won’t be stuck while you need to work with freezing rows or columns in Excel.

Excel is a crucial aspect of everyday business. It is imperative to get it right so that business processes and functions run smoothly. If you fail to freeze a row in excel, it is quite possible that your business process may take a lot of time than usual, hindering productivity significantly.

If you wish to avail such easy tutorials about working on Excel, watch out for this space for more updates.

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkOwf4znxLg

---