Just imagine this. You are working on a spreadsheet normally when all of a sudden you notice that you cannot move from cell to cell - instead of getting to the next cell, the arrow keys scroll the whole worksheet. Don't panic, your Excel is not broken. You have just accidentally turned Scroll Lock on, and this can be easily fixed.What is Scroll Lock in Excel?Scroll Lock is the feature that controls the behavior of the arrow keys in Excel.Usually, when the Scroll Lock is disabled, arrow keys move you between individual cells in any direction: up, down, left or right.However, when the Scroll Lock is enabled in Excel, arrow keys scroll the worksheet area: one row up and down or one column to the left or right. When the worksheet is scrolled, the current selection (a cell or range) does not change.
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Locking Rows Together When Sorting - Excel I need to lock consecutive rows together before sorting. A1 contains a name and A2 is blank: B1 contains data related to name in A1 - so does B2, and so on. Therefore need to lock rows 1 and 2 together, then 3 and 4 together and so on, but sorting on the data in the first cell of the group e.g.
How to determine that Scroll Lock is enabledTo see whether the Scroll Lock is turned on, just look at the status bar at the bottom of the Excel window. Among other useful things (such as page numbers; average, sum and count of selected cells), the status bar shows if Scroll Lock is on:If your arrow keys scroll the whole sheet instead of moving to the next cell but the Excel status bar has no indication of Scroll Lock, most likely your status bar was customized not to display the Scroll Lock status. To determine if it's the case, right click the status bar and see if there is a tick mark to the left of Scroll Lock. If a tick mark is not there, simply click the Scroll Lock to have its status appear on the status bar. The Excel status bar only displays the Scroll Lock status, but does not control it. How to turn off Scroll Lock in Excel for WindowsMuch like Num Lock and Caps Lock, the Scroll Lock feature is a toggle, meaning it can be turned on and off by pressing the Scroll Lock key.
Disable scroll lock in Excel using the keyboardIf your keyboard has a key labeled as Scroll Lock or ScrLk key, just press it to turn Scroll Lock off. Done:)As soon as you do this, Scroll Lock will disappear from the status bar and your arrows keys will move from cell to cell normally. Remove scroll lock in Excel using on-screen keyboardIf you don't have the Scroll Lock key or it does not work for some reason, you can 'unlock' Scroll Lock in Excel by using the on-screen keyboard.The fastest way to turn off Screen Lock in Excel is this:. Click the Windows button and start typing ' on-screen keyboard' in the search box. Usually, it is sufficient to type the first two characters for the On-Screen Keyboard app to appear at the top of the search results. Click the On-Screen Keyboard app to run it. The virtual keyboard will show up, and you click the ScrLk key to remove Scroll Lock.You'll know that Scroll Lock is disabled when the ScrLk key returns to dark-grey.
If it is blue, Scroll Lock is still on.Alternatively, you can open the virtual keyboard in the following ways: On Windows 10Click Start Settings Ease of Access Keyboard, and then click the On-Screen Keyboard slider button. On Windows 8.1Click Start, press Ctrl + C to display the Charms bar, then click Change PC Settings Ease of Access Keyboard On Screen Keyboard slider button. On Windows 7Click Start All Programs Accessories Ease of Access On-Screen Keyboard.To close the on-screen keyboard, click the X button in the upper-right corner.
Scroll Lock in Excel for MacUnlike Excel for Windows, Excel for Mac does not show Scroll Lock in the status bar. So, how can you know that Scroll Lock is on? Press any arrow key and watch the address in the name box. If the address does not change and the arrow key scrolls the whole worksheet, it's safe to assume that Scroll Lock is enabled.
How to remove Scroll Lock in Excel for MacOn the Apple Extended Keyboard, press the F14 key, which is an analogue of the Scroll Lock key on a PC keyboard.If F14 exists on your keyboard, but there is no Fn key, use the Shift + F14 shortcut to toggle the Scroll Lock on or off. Depending on your settings, you may need to press the CONTROL or OPTION or COMMAND (⌘) key instead of the SHIFT key.If you are working on a smaller keyboard that does not have the F14 key, you can try to remove Scroll Lock by running that emulates the Shift + F14 keystroke.That's how you turn off Scroll Lock in Excel.
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When you are working with a large spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel, it's easy to find yourself scrolling down or across and losing track of where you are. This lesson explains how to freeze rows and columns (officially known as 'Freeze Panes') in Excel 2010 for Windows and Excel 2011 for Mac. Why you might need to freeze rows or columns in your spreadsheet.Imagine you have a spreadsheet that contains sales data for January.To freeze the heading row of the table, you will have to freeze the first five rows in the worksheet. To do this, click in the cell A6 (i.e the first row that should not be frozen) and choose the first option in the Freeze Panes drop-down menu (it's also called Freeze Panes).When you do this, not much will appear to change. All you'll see is a line stretching across the screen, almost like a border along the bottom of row 5 (which is the last row to be frozen in our example). The screenshot shows what Freeze Panes looks like if you had clicked B6 before clicking Freeze Panes (i.e.
You wanted rows 1-5 and column A to be frozen):.Here's what the sales data table looks like if you scroll down. As you can see, the first five rows have stayed put, and the other rows have disappeared underneath them as I've scrolled down the screen:How to unfreeze panes in ExcelUnfreezing panes is, fortunately, fairly simple:. In Excel 2010 for Windows, choose the View menu, click the Freeze Panes button. The first option, which was Freeze Panes, is now Unfreeze Panes. Click that option and the frozen rows will be unfrozen.
In Excel 2011 for Mac, choose the Layout menu and choose Unfreeze Panes (for some reason, it's a separate option which only becomes available once you have frozen panes). We welcome your comments and questions about this lesson. We don't welcome spam. Our readers get a lot of value out of the comments and answers on our lessons and spam hurts that experience. Our spam filter is pretty good at stopping bots from posting spam, and our admins are quick to delete spam that does get through. We know that bots don't read messages like this, but there are people out there who manually post spam. I repeat - we delete all spam, and if we see repeated posts from a given IP address, we'll block the IP address.
So don't waste your time, or ours. One other point to note - if you post a link in your comment, it will automatically be deleted. Hi LRI know your pain.
I have an Excel spreadsheet that does this to me as well. Not sure if it's a Mac thing, but it's an old Excel for Windows spreadsheet that I transferred to the Mac. Oddly, I don't have that problem if I create a new table in the Mac version.Three ways to do what you want:. Enable Autofilter for the table, and then use the Sort option within the Autofilter dropdown on the column you want to sort by. Do an Custom Sort and specify that ' My list has headers'. Convert the data to an Excel Table.
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Click inside the data (make sure Autofilter is off), click the Tables ribbon option, then click the New table button (the first button on the Tables ribbon). This will convert it to a Table and sorting should respect the headers.I hope that helps!David.
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