Freeze Panes

One feature of Excel that many people are still unsure of how to use is Freeze Panes. This allows a user to lock a particular row or column in place, so that the information contained within that row or column is constantly displayed on the screen when scrolling across or down the page. It sounds simple enough, but actually knowing where it is located and how to use it is the trick.

So how exactly does this help someone? Let’s find out:

Say for example that you have an Excel spreadsheet that contains the information of each customer within a school (First Name, Last Name, Year Level, Accounting Test, Chemistry Test, Maths Test, Social Studies Test, etc). One of the biggest problems that you face is that there are far too many columns of data to fit on the screen. You want to find out Roger Smith’s social studies test score, only, by the time you’ve found his name and scrolled all the way across to get to the chemistry test column, you’ve forgotten the students’ name (It was Robert Stevenson…right?).

To solve this problem, we’re going to freeze the ‘First Name’ and ‘Last Name’ columns, so that wherever we are on the page, the names will be forever visible. We will also freeze the first row, so that we can see which subject it is that we are looking at the result for.

Here is how to go about freezing those areas of the spreadsheet:

1.       Click on the View tab in the Excel Ribbon

2.       To freeze a column, you must click in the cell to the right of the column that you wish to freeze. To freeze a row, you must click in the cell below the row that you wish to freeze. Therefore, in the example, we would click on cell C2, as it is to the right of the two columns that we wish to freeze and just below the row that we wish to freeze.

3.       Click the Freeze Panes button and choose the Freeze Panes option.

As you can see in the following image, we are able to scroll to any section of the test scores spreadsheet and know exactly what information we are observing at all times. You’ll find that as you rely more and more on spreadsheets to carry out tasks, the more useful you will find the freeze panes function.

So there you go. With a little bit of practice, you’ll all become freeze pane masters!