Excel: How to Freeze Columns and Rows

I have always loved data. I am a data hoarder. I remember when I first started working for the United Methodists, all their data on churches was in the back of little books called Journals. I thought, “What a waste!” Why collect the data if you can’t use it?

I learned that the church data was stored in individual Excel files on a 3.5″ floppy disk. One floppy disk for each year. This was in 2008 so I was surprised to see folks still used floppy disks. I ended up combining all those Excel files (now over four years of data) into one massive file. Tens of thousands of rows and over 30 columns. How do you navigate such a large file?

When I’m doing more of the detailed work of verifying the data, I want to always know what row and column I’m editing. The best way to keep track of where you are at in a large Excel file is to freeze the first column and the top row. Here’s the instructions from Microsoft (or you could watch my video):

Freeze the first column

1. Select View > Freeze Panes > Freeze First Column.

The faint line that appears between Column A and B shows that the first column is frozen.

Freeze the first two columns

1. Select the third column.
2. Select View > Freeze Panes > Freeze Panes.

Freeze columns and rows

1. Select the cell below the rows and to the right of the columns you want to keep visible when you scroll.
2. Select View > Freeze Panes > Freeze Panes.

Unfreeze rows or columns

1. On the View tab > Window > Unfreeze Panes.

---

Useful Links

• Instructions from Microsoft: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/freeze-panes-to-lock-rows-and-columns-dab2ffc9-020d-4026-8121-67dd25f2508f