Tips of the Week - Information Technology

Technology Tip of the Week - October 11, 2006

Freezing Columns or Rows in Microsoft Excel

For those of you using Microsoft Excel to maintain an electronic grade book or a spreadsheet to track information that extends over many columns and rows, there is a wonderful feature in Excel that will allow you to "freeze" a header row or a column to make it easier to record information. Have you ever been in a situation where you have to scroll so far over to the left or so far down the rows that the label information is no longer visible? Then this tip is for you!

You can view two areas of a worksheet and lock rows or columns in one area by splitting or freezing panes. When you split panes, you'll be able to scroll in both areas of the worksheet, while rows or columns in the non-scrolled area remain visible.

When you freeze panes, you select specific rows or columns that remain visible when scrolling in the worksheet. For example, you would freeze panes to keep row and column labels visible as you scroll through your grade book or worksheet.

Lock rows and columns by splitting panes

To lock rows, select the row below where you want the split to appear.
To lock columns, select the column to the right of where you want the split to appear.

To lock both rows and columns, click the cell below and to the right of where you want the split to appear.
On the Window menu, click Split.
To remove the split, click Remove Split on the Window menu.

Tip

For a quick way to split panes, point to the split box at the top of the vertical scroll bar or at the right end of the horizontal scroll bar.

Split box

When the pointer changes to a split pointer

, drag the split box down or to the left to the position you want.

Lock rows and columns by freezing panes

To lock rows, select the row below where you want the split to appear.
To lock columns, select the column to the right of where you want the split to appear.

To lock both rows and columns, click the cell below and to the right of where you want the split to appear.
On the Window menu, click Freeze Panes. Now when you scroll through your grade book or worksheet, the columns will appear to slide under the frozen columns so you never lose your labels.
To unlock rows, click Unfreeze Panes on the Window menu.

Still unsure of how this works. Watch this video demo on the Microsoft website at:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA012001021033.aspx

For more help with these features, please contact one of the IT Instructional Support team (Norm Grant, Gene Grande or Linda Beith) or faculty mentors Tony Basilico or Kathy Beauchene.

Website of the Week

The Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT)

For those of you interested in the latest in online teaching and learning, check out the current issue of the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) at: http://jolt.merlot.org/currentissue.html. There are lots of great articles as well as an archive of past features. This is a great site to bookmark and check periodically to keep current on the latest innovations in online learning, even if you never plan to teach at a distance.

Feel free to post your thoughts or opinions of this site in the Teaching Forum message board.

These tips are provided by the Department of Information Technology instructional support team. If you have any questions on these tips, or wish to offer your own, please feel free to contact Linda Beith at lbeith@ccri.edu. View an archive of past technology tips at http://it.ccri.edu/Training/Tips/tip_week.shtml.