How to freeze the top row of a spreadsheet
Freeze panes in Grid by Zaweba to keep a header row, or a column of names, in view while you scroll through a long sheet, and saved with the file.
Freeze panes keeps it in place. Grid by Zaweba has a freeze panes command among its sheet tools that keeps the rows above and the columns to the left of a chosen point in view while the rest of the sheet scrolls. Freeze the top row and your column headings stay on screen however far down you go.
Why it matters
A list of a few hundred rows soon scrolls its headings off the screen, and then every column is just numbers. Is that the price or the cost? The quantity or the order number? Freezing the header row answers the question at a glance. Freezing the first column does the same for wide sheets, keeping names or dates visible as you scroll across months of figures.
Freezing step by step
To freeze only the top row, use the freeze panes option for the top row. The line under row 1 becomes the edge of the frozen area. Scroll down and row 1 stays put.
To freeze more than one row, or rows and columns together, select the cell just below and to the right of what you want frozen, then freeze panes. Select B2 and row 1 and column A both stay in view. Select A4 and the first three rows stay, which suits a sheet with a title, a blank line and a header row.
To undo it, use the same command to unfreeze. Nothing in the cells changes either way; freezing only affects what you see.
Freezing in tables and long lists
If your data is a table, its header row already helps. As you scroll down a table, the headings remain useful, and the filter drop-downs live in that row. Freezing the header as well keeps the filter arrows in reach, which is handy when you're filtering and scrolling a long list at the same time.
Grid copes well with large sheets. It draws only the visible cells, so scrolling to row 900,000 of a million-row sheet is quick, and frozen headings come along without slowing anything down.
Frozen panes and other files
Freeze panes is saved with the workbook. Grid writes it into .xlsx and .zagr files, and it reads frozen panes from .xlsx files you open, so a sheet someone else set up arrives frozen in the same place. For printing, freezing doesn't carry onto paper: use repeated title rows in Page Setup so the headings print at the top of every page.
Other ways to keep your bearings
A second window on the same workbook lets you look at two parts of a sheet, or two sheets, at once. Grid can open a new window on the workbook for this.
Go To (Ctrl+G or F5) jumps to any cell or name, and Ctrl+Home returns to the top-left of the sheet when you need to get back to the start.
Split panes, the older way of dividing one window into scrolling sections, isn't built in Grid, so freezing and a second window are the ways to do it.
A small habit worth forming
Freeze the header row of every list as soon as you create it. It takes a second, it's saved in the file, and everyone who opens the sheet after you, in Grid by Zaweba or another program, benefits from it.
