Updated June 2, 2023
Part -21 – Freeze panes and split panes
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Freeze panes and split panes (without solution)
Freeze panes and split panes (with solution)
Transcript For The Video – Freeze panes and split panes
In this set of video tutorials, we are going to understand how we can efficiently navigate the Excel sheet when we are dealing with large databases with the help of function like freeze panes and split panes. Now essentially, there would be time when we really want to freeze a certain sections or columns or tables so that they are visible across the board. Say, for example, when we scroll down the EXCEL sheet, what we find is, let us say we are talking about this employee TONY. It may not be so intuitive to understand what this 2.63 corresponds to which heading, so to make it more detailed in terms of understanding, I may require the heading to be continuously shown at the top, and for doing that, I may like to freeze the top rows. So if I would have freeze this row, and then I would have kind of navigated to the bottom, then it would have been really simplified. So let us understand freeze panes in detail. You will find freeze panes under the view tab and in this panel. So there are various options under freeze panes; you will also find freeze top row and freeze first column. So freezing top row would mean that first row will get freeze, and if we navigate from top to bottom, we will find that first row is always visible, so undo this effect; you can go to freeze panes again and unfreeze the panes. Let us try to see what happens when we freeze the first column. When we freeze the first column, you will find that the first column, which is the A column gets freeze, and when we navigates from left to right, A column is still visible. However, in our condition, we really want to freeze both the serial number and the name. We will have to use a different approach. The approach will be to select this cell which is C4. Why we are selecting C4 is that we want to always view the serial number on the left-hand side, and we always want to view the heading at the top. So the cell below these heading, and the cell on right-hand side of the column B, this will be the cell we should use for freezing the panes; and let us see what happens when we do that. You will find that there are two kind of virtual lines that run from the left to right and top to bottom, and when we scroll from the top to bottom, you will always find the top header to be visible; and when you scroll from left to right, you will find that the serial number would be visible. So this is how you can use the freeze panes. In order to remove the effect of freeze pane, go ahead and unfreeze the panes and that is what you would kind of remove the effects of panes that are freeze. So another approach, like the way we have worked across freeze panes, there is another option that is available on the top, which is called as split panes. Now the word itself is very intuitive, and if you want to divide our worksheet into two parts with different scroll bars, we can use split panes. So let us say, for example, I want to divide my worksheet into two parts from row number 16. I want two different scroll bars for the top pane and the bottom pane. I can actually select this cell, say, for example, A16, and click here on split panes. Now watch what happens on right-hand side. I have a different scroll bar for the top pane, and I have different scroll bar here for the bottom pane. So you have divided your worksheet into two parts. What is the utility of, you know, having this split pane in such a manner? Probably when you are dealing with a large set of data, you may want certain sections to be referred. Say, for example, I want to refer to the total salary section here and write some documentation on cell number 42. So looking at this would be really helpful because I can really make notes quickly by looking at the selective section of the panes. By using function called split panes, the one which we saw in the previous example, by dividing the worksheet area into two parts on the top and on the bottom. We can also divide this worksheet into four parts by selecting a cell in between. Let us say I am randomly choosing this cell which is H24, and I can click on split. Now what happens here is my worksheet area gets divided into four different usable areas with different scrollbars. That’s how you know you can kind of work across this sheets and make the most of the selective usable area for which you require some documentation to be done. So this is about split pane and you may also find split panes on the right-hand side. This is like shortcut which you may like to look at. I would first and foremost remove these four splits on the right-hand side. If you navigate on the right-hand side, you will find this small button which is now blinking. You just click on it and move across in this worksheet, and you will find that your panes gets divided into two parts. So basically, this is very shortcut way of introducing splits. So this was for the vertical bar for the horizontal bar, you can see it is on the top. You can introduce this split, and it divides it into two parts, and off-course, you can see that you can resize your split according to your need. So you can select this split divide this into usable areas of necessary bandwidth
