Microsoft Office

Part I
Getting Started with Excel
FIGURE 4.7
You can split the worksheet window into two or four panes to view different areas of the worksheet at the same time.
Another way to split and unsplit panes is to drag either the vertical or horizontal split bar. These bars are
the small rectangles that normally appear just above the top of the vertical scroll bar and just to the right of
the horizontal scroll bar. When you move the mouse pointer over a split bar, the mouse pointer changes to
a pair of parallel lines with arrows pointing outward from each line. To remove split panes by using the
mouse, drag the pane separator all the way to the edge of the window or just double-click it.
Keeping the titles in view by freezing panes
If you set up a worksheet with row or column headings, these headings will not be visible when you scroll
down or to the right.. Excel provides a handy solution to this problem: freezing panes. Freezing panes
keeps the headings visible while you’re scrolling through the worksheet.
To freeze panes, start by moving the cell pointer to the cell below the row that you want to remain visible as
you scroll vertically, and to the right of the column that you want to remain visible as you scroll horizontally.
Then, choose View ➪ Window ➪ Freeze Panes and select the Freeze Panes option from the dropdown
list. Excel inserts dark lines to indicate the frozen rows and columns. The frozen row and column
remain visible as you scroll throughout the worksheet. To remove the frozen panes, choose View ➪
Window ➪ Freeze Panes, and select the Unfreeze Panes option from the drop-down list.
Figure 4.8 shows a worksheet with frozen panes. In this case, rows 1:3 and column A are frozen in place.
This technique allows you to scroll down and to the right to locate some information while keeping the column
titles and the column A entries visible.
The vast majority of the time, you’ll want to freeze either the first row or the first column.
Excel 2007 makes it a bit easier. The View ➪ Window ➪ Freeze Panes drop-down list has two
additional options: Freeze Top Row and Freeze First Column. Using these commands eliminates the need to
position the cell pointer before freezing panes.
NEW FEATURE
If you have designated a range to be a table (by choosing Insert ➪ Tables ➪ Table), you may
NEW FEATURE
not even need to freeze panes. When you scroll down, Excel displays the table column headings
in place of the column letters. Figure 4.9 shows an example. The table headings replace the column letters
only when a cell within the table is selected.
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