When using an Excel spreadsheet you have the ability to manage thousands of cells. To keep some rows and columns always visible while scrolling the sheet you can lock them. If you want to easily edit two distant parts of your spreadsheet by viewing them at the same time, tiling will make the task easier.
Steps
Part 1 of 2: Locking Cells
Step 1. Determine what you want to block
The frozen cells will remain on the screen as you scroll through the rest of the spreadsheet. This is very useful if you want column headers or row identifiers to remain visible anywhere in the spreadsheet. You can only freeze entire rows or entire columns.
Step 2. Click on the "View" tab
Find the "Window" group. This contains the "Freeze Panes" button.
Step 3. Freeze the top row
If the top row contains column headings and you want them to always be visible, you can lock it. Click the "Freeze Panes" button and select "Freeze Top Row". A line will appear below the top line and it will remain on the screen if you scroll down.
Step 4. Freeze the leftmost column
If you have a lot of columns to fill in and want to be able to see the identifier of each row, you can freeze the leftmost column. Click the "Freeze Panes" button and select "Freeze First Column". A line will appear to the right of the first column and it will remain on the screen if you scroll to the right.
Step 5. Freeze the rows and columns
You can freeze both rows and columns if you want them to stay on screen. The pinned columns and rows must be in the edge of the spreadsheet, but you can pin multiple columns and multiple rows at once.
- For example, you can freeze columns A and B, but you can't just freeze column B.
- To choose the one you want to freeze, select the cell whose borders you want to delimit the new upper corner and click on the "Freeze frames" button; then, choose "Freeze Panes". Everything above and to the left of the cell will be blocked. For example, if you select cell C5, rows 1-4 will be locked along with columns A and B.
Step 6. Unlock the cells
If you want the spreadsheet to return to normal, click the "Freeze Panes" button and select "Unfreeze Panes". The locked cells will be unlocked.
Part 2 of 2: Split into Multiple Panes
Step 1. Decide what you want to divide
Splitting the panes allows you to scroll through them separately. This function is very useful for large spreadsheets where you need to work on several areas at the same time.
When splitting, the operation splits the sheet into four editable sections
Step 2. Drag the splitter bars
The splitter bars are located at the top of the vertical scroll bar and to the right of the horizontal scroll bar. Click and drag the bars to set the new frame border. You can scroll through the spreadsheet for every single pane you create.
Drag-and-drop split bars are no longer available in Office 2013. Instead, you can click the "Split" button on the "View" tab to create a default split that you can click and drag to adjust as needed
Step 3. Delete a division
If you want to remove the split, double click on the split bar to make it disappear, or click the "Split" button again.
