Spreadsheet Magic - A Cool Tip for a Big Spreadsheet

As the weather heats up, sometimes it’s good to think about cold things.  Like freezing things.  Like… freezing panes.

If you have a large spreadsheet with more rows and/or columns than will fit on your computer screens, try freezing panes to keep you column and row titles visible while you scroll through the worksheet.  Here’s how…
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In the spreadsheet below, I have listed the census years and places across the top and the names of the family I researching in column A.  As I move forward through the years or downward below the first few names, I’d like to be able to see columns A, B and C and rows 3 and 4.  In this example, if I place my cursor in cell D5 and on the View tab click “Freeze Panes,” I am given some options, to freeze the top row, freeze the first column or to freeze panes.  That’s the one I chose, because it will keep my names as well as my census years. 

When I click on the freeze panes, note the lines that appear:

Now I can move to the right or downward and my titles will remain to explain to me what I’m looking at.
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Freeze panes – a cool tip for a big spreadsheet.  Try it!