Is there a shortcut to freeze top row in excel?

Excel has a lot of keyboard shortcuts. This article will show you how to find the shortcut for any command that your frequently use. Also - a look at Freeze Panes in Excel.

There are hundreds more shortcuts like this which you can easily learn. Press and release Alt in Excel to see key tips for each tab in the Ribbon (plus numbered key tips for the Quick Access Toolbar. Press the letter corresponding to a Ribbon tab to see the key tips for all of the commands on that tab.

In this particular case, clicking Alt + W + F reveals a third level of key tips, so Alt + W, F, F completes the command.

Thanks to Bradford Myers for sending in this idea.

Learn Excel From MrExcel, Podcast Episode 2146: How To Figure Out Shortcut Keys.

Alright, so, for these last, what, 20-some episodes, I've been talking about my favorite shortcut keys but these may not be your favorite shortcut keys. So, what's important to you is, what are the things you're doing over and over and over, right, and what's the keyboard shortcut for that, right?

So, the first thing you should do is look in the command and see if the tool tip tells you what the keyboard shortcut is. Like, for example, AUTOSUM. If we come up here to AUTOSUM and hover over SUM, right there, it tells us that the shortcut key is ALT+=, alright?

So that's going to be the fastest way to run that command, but let's say that you had to do VIEW, FREEZE PANES, FREEZE PANES right? See, I hover, hover, hover, hover, hover. There's nothing there that's going to offer freeze panes. Now, if you prefer to use the mouse, by all means, right click, ADD GALLERY TO QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR. I don't like that at all. I would really want to have just FREEZE PANES on the QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR.

Maybe we customize, but the keyboard shortcut for this, for anything that you want to learn how to do, just press and release ALT, and then you see that there's little key tips on, well, first off, all the quick access toolbar items. Those are awesome. The first 9 are easy to do, you know, so you should have your best ones there, but then I know that I want to go to the VIEW tab.

So, the key tip is W, so, I press W to get to the VIEW tab, and then they add more key tips. So, to open the FREEZE PANES, it's going to be F. So, it's going to be ALT+W, F, and then the top one is FREEZE PANES, so ALT+W, F, F, and if you find that you're constantly using FREEZE PANES over and over and over again, figure out what that string is, alright, and just do 1 a week, just 1 a week. Try and get 1 new one a week, and so ALT+W, F, F, right there, and I was able to freeze panes. Already, that's so much faster than going to click on VIEW, OPEN FREEZE PANES, choose FREEZE PANES, you know, and then move your hand back to the mouse.

So, ALT+W, F, F, and this podcast isn't about that one keyboard shortcut. It’s about how to figure out the keyboard shortcut for anything you find yourself doing frequently. If you ever want to become incredibly fast at Excel, using keyboard shortcuts is the fast, fast...using keyboard shortcuts is the best way to make you really, really fast at Excel.

Thanks for stopping by. We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.

A short background about using the shortcuts

Using the shortcut keys can drastically save your working time, dealing effectively with many small (but frequently repeated) actions.

The main improvement that the keystrokes offer is that you don't have to get your hands off the keyboard and grab the mouse and start visually searching for menus and buttons.

For Example, to add a new workbook (a new Excel file) without a shortcut, you must click the "Office Button", choose "New" and then double click the "Blank Workbook" icon. Only now you can bring your hand back to the keyboard and continue your work.

Would'nt it be easier to just to click Ctrl+N? (The Ctrl key together with N)

Here are three abbreviation examples just to make the information coming next clear:

Shift+SPACE means: pressing shift together with the space bar. (This specific shourtcut will select a row)
Ctrl+C means: pressing Ctrl together with the letter C. (This specific shourtcut will perform a "Copy" action).

Shift+Ctrl+Arrow Down means: pressing together the Shift key, with the Ctrl key, with the Arrow Down key. You should press them down in the order they are written here, otherwise it might not work. (this specific shourtcut will select all the way to the bottom of a region)

Shortcuts for inserting rows, columns and worksheets:

Insert row: Alt+i and then r
Insert a column: Alt+i and then c
Insert new Worksheet: Alt+i and then w

How to remember?
You get into "Insert" mode by pressing Alt+i, and then the first letter of either Row, Column or Worksheet.

To choose the next worksheet (Like going from Sheet1 to Sheet2): Ctrl+PgDown
Choose the previous worksheet: Ctrl+PgUp

Shortcuts for efficiently selecting regions:

Select the whole worksheet: Ctrl+A
By holding down Ctrl+Shift and pressing one of the arrows, you can accordingly select all the way to the left, right, top and bottom of the region.
For example: Selecting all the way to the bottom of the region: Ctrl+Shift+Arrow down

One extremely efficient way of selecting a region, is to have the active cell inside that region, and pressing Ctrl+Shift+8
Try it!

Select the whole row by pressing Shift+SPACE, and column by pressing Ctrl+SPACE

Jumping to specific locations in the worksheet:

Press Ctrl+G, and write the destination cell's address. For example: A100

Ctrl+End will jump to the last cell of your data in the worksheet (the most bottom-right cell). It is relevant if you have already some data written in your worksheet, otherwise in an empty worksheet it will jump to the really last cell in the worksheet. Try it.

Ctrl+Home should jump the active cell to cell A1

Instantly opening useful dialog boxes:

Ctrl+1 (Ctrl and the number one) will open the "Format Cells" dialog box (very useful!)

Alt+E and then S – will open the "Paste Special" dialog box. If you want to use the "Values" option from this dialog box, then continue and press Alt+v, and finish with Enter.

Editing text:

Press F2 in a cell that has text, and a text cursor will appear at the end of it, enabling you to add more content or edit the existing text. (This comes instead of double clicking with the mouse inside the text, or clicking in the formulas bar to edit it).

Press Alt+Enter when writing text in a cell, to add a line break

the cell.

Miscellaneous shortcuts:

Freeze panes:

Put the active cell in the desired location, and press Alt+w and then F.
To remove the freeze panes, use the same shortcut.

Position the active cell underneath a column of numbers, and press Alt+= (Alt key together with the equal sign)

To insert today's date, press Ctrl+; (a semicolon).
To have today's date change dynamically to reflect always the current date (whenever the worksheet is opened), then write the function =today()

Select your data (it should be organized neatly with rows and column headers), and press the F11 key.

And of course: all the general MS Office Shortcuts:

To open the "Find" dialog box: Ctrl+F
To open the "Find and replace" dialog box: Ctrl+H
Save file: Ctrl+S
Open a file: Ctrl+O
Add a new Excel file (a new workbook): Ctrl+N
Open the "Print" dialog box: Ctrl+P
Ctrl+C to Copy a selection, Ctrl+X to cut, Ctrl+V to Paste.
Save as… : The F12 key.
Applying the formatting of Bold, Italic and Underline, will be accordingly: Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I and Ctrl+U

How do I freeze the top row in Excel with keyboard?

Is there a shortcut to freeze panes in Excel?

How do I freeze top 3 rows in Excel?

How do I keep the top row constant in Excel?