In Excel, quite often you will want to compare data in completely different areas of your worksheet.
Instead of scrolling back and forth between these two areas, you can simply freeze rows in Excel so that the data in those rows stays frozen as you scroll.
You can also freeze the first row and column so you can easily keep track of what each row and column in the dataset represents.
Freeze Top Row in Excel
Excel gives a quick option to freeze the top row, since most users are looking for this functionality.
1. Click on View > Freeze Panes: From the top menu, click on View and then click on Freeze Panes.
2. Click on Freeze Top Row: To freeze the top row, simply click on click on Freeze Top Row from the dropdown.
As you can see in the example below, the first row is frozen and stays visible when scrolling down. A thin line also appears below row 1 to indicate that the rows above that line are frozen.
Freeze Rows in Excel
Excel also allows you to freeze a custom number of rows.
1. Select Row: Select a row below the rows you want to freeze. If you want to freeze the first three rows, select row 4.
2. Click on View > Freeze Panes: From the top, click on View and then click on Freeze Panes
3. Click on Freeze Panes: From the dropdown menu click on Freeze Panes.
Since we selected row 4, the first three rows are frozen. Had we selected row 5, the first 4 row would have been frozen.
Freeze Columns in Excel
You can also freeze columns in Excel.
1. Select Column: Select the column to the right of the columns you want to freeze. If you want to freeze the first column, select the second column.
2. Click on View > Freeze Panes: From the top click on View and then from the options click on Freeze Panes.
3. Click on Freeze Panes: To freeze the column/columns, click on Freeze Panes from the dropdown menu.
In our example column A is frozen because we selected column B in step 1.
Unfreeze Rows and Columns in Excel
If you no longer want the rows or columns to be frozen, then here is how to unfreeze rows and columns in Excel.
1. Click on View > Freeze Panes > Unfreeze Panes: From the top menu, click on View and then click on Freeze Panes and then Unfreeze Panes from the dropdown menu.
This will unfreeze all rows and columns in the Excel worksheet.