How to Freeze Panes in Microsoft Excel

Freezing panes is a way of making one or more rows or columns stay at the top or left of your worksheet as you scroll through the worksheet. A common use of freezing panes is to keep a header row in view as you scroll through a large worksheet. To freeze panes in an Excel worksheet, follow these four steps.

This feature works the same in all modern versions of Microsoft Excel: 2010, 2013, and 2016.

1. On the View tab, in the Window group, click the Freeze Panes command.
2. Select Freeze Panes to freeze the rows above and the columns to the left of the selected cell.
3. Select Freeze Top Row to freeze the top row only.
4. Select Freeze First Column to freeze the first column only.

In the following example, notice that the top row includes labels for each column.

After scrolling down in the worksheet, however, the top row is not visible.

In the following image, the top row is frozen, so the labels are visible even after scrolling down in the worksheet.