Freeze Panes: keep headers visible across 1,000 rows
Scroll past row 30 and your column headers vanish, so you're counting columns to remember which one is which. Freeze Panes pins them in place.
The one rule that makes it work
Freeze Panes freezes everything above and to the left of the cell you select. So:
- To freeze just the top row, select cell A2, then View → Freeze Panes → Freeze Panes.
- To freeze the top row and the first column, select B2 (one below, one right of the corner) and Freeze Panes.
- To freeze the first two rows and first column, select B3. The pattern is always: click the cell below and right of everything you want to keep.
The shortcuts for the common cases
View → Freeze Panes → Freeze Top Row pins row 1 no matter where you're sitting. Freeze First Column does the same for column A. Use these when you just need headers and don't want to think about cell selection.
To undo
View → Freeze Panes → Unfreeze Panes. If freezing did something unexpected, it's almost always because the active cell wasn't where you thought — unfreeze, select the right cell, and try again.