How to Freeze a Row in Excel (Beginner Guide)

1. Introduction

Excel, with features like freezing panes, simplifies viewing content from different areas within a workbook. By freezing rows or columns, specific cells remain visible while scrolling through content. This can be achieved using the IronXL library, which offers advanced Excel operations, including a freeze-pane option.

2. Freeze and Unfreeze Rows and Columns using Excel

2.1 Freeze Rows

In your worksheet, you might want to permanently display a specific row or column, particularly the header cells. You can scroll over your material while still viewing the frozen cells by freezing rows or columns in place.

Step 1: Select the row you want to freeze or, if you want to freeze the top row, select row 1. In this case, choose row 1 to freeze it to see the header at all times.

The Excel data demonstrated for freezing rows

Step 2: Choose Freeze Panes from the drop-down menu by clicking the Freeze Panes command on the View tab.

Navigate to the Freeze Panes function in Microsoft Excel

Step 3: The gray line indicates that the rows are frozen in place. The frozen rows can still be viewed at the top of the worksheet as you scroll down. In this example, scroll down to row 17, but row 1 still can be seen on the screen because it has been frozen as the top row.

Gray indication for frozen rows

2.2 Freeze Columns

Step 1: Choose the column to the right of the column or columns you wish to freeze. In this case, choose column B to freeze column A.

The Excel data demonstrated for freezing columns

Step 2: Choose Freeze Panes from the drop-down menu by clicking the Freeze Panes command on the View tab.

Navigate to the Freeze Panes function in Microsoft Excel

Step 3: Then, select the column to freeze, which will be shown in a gray line. The gray line indicates where the column will be frozen in place. When navigating through the worksheet, the frozen column remains visible on the left-hand side. In this example, scroll down to column G and can still see the frozen column on the left.

Gray indication for frozen columns

2.3 Unfreezing Panes

If you want to select a different view option, you may need to reset the spreadsheet by unfreezing the panes. To do this, click the Freeze Panes command and then select Unfreeze Panes from the drop-down menu to unfreeze rows or columns.

Navigate to the Unfreeze Panes function in Microsoft Excel

3. Freeze and Unfreeze Rows and Columns using IronXL

3.1 IronXL Features

IronXL is a .NET library that enables the reading and editing of Microsoft Excel documents in C#. It is a standalone .NET software library that can read multiple spreadsheet formats. The installation of Microsoft Excel or Interop is not required.

With IronXL's user-friendly C# API, it is easy to read, modify, and create Excel spreadsheet files in the .NET environment. The library provides comprehensive support for .NET Core, .NET Framework, Xamarin, Mobile, Linux, macOS, and Azure, and is among the best Excel spreadsheet libraries for these platforms.

3.2 IronXL Features

• Data from XLS, XLSX, CSV, and TSV can be edited, read, and loaded.
• It supports storing and exporting data to CSV, TSV, JSON, XLS, and XLSX.
• Ranges can be easily utilized with the WorkSheet ["A1:B10"] syntax. Ranges can be mixed logically.
• Columns, rows, and ranges can be sorted.
• Examples of styling include cell visual styles, font, size, border, alignment, lock, freeze cells, hide/unhide rows, and number formats can be applied.

3.3 Freeze Panes using IronXL

Freezing rows and columns in Excel allows them to remain fixed in the specified location on the screen while scrolling, making it easier to keep track of columns and refer to them. Below is a sample code for freezing rows:

using IronXL;

WorkBook wb = WorkBook.LoadExcel("sample1.xlsx");
WorkSheet ws = wb.GetWorkSheet("Sheet1");
ws.CreateFreezePane(0, 1);
wb.SaveAs("sample1.xlsx");

using IronXL;

WorkBook wb = WorkBook.LoadExcel("sample1.xlsx");
WorkSheet ws = wb.GetWorkSheet("Sheet1");
ws.CreateFreezePane(0, 1);
wb.SaveAs("sample1.xlsx");

Imports IronXL

Private wb As WorkBook = WorkBook.LoadExcel("sample1.xlsx")
Private ws As WorkSheet = wb.GetWorkSheet("Sheet1")
ws.CreateFreezePane(0, 1)
wb.SaveAs("sample1.xlsx")

The above code is a sample that freezes the top row of the Excel sheet. In the first step, load the existing Excel sheet using the file location and name. The method WorkBook.LoadExcel is used to load the existing file into the object web, which can perform various types of Excel processes. Then, select the Excel sheet by specifying the worksheet name. The method GetWorkSheet is used to get the sheet name as a parameter.

Next, use the worksheet function called CreateFreezePane, which has two parameters - one for the column position and the other for the row position. Using this function, it can freeze multiple columns and as many rows as we want. This will pass the freeze panes command to automatically freeze the first column as shown in the code. In the above code, if the value is changed from 0 to 1, it will keep the leftmost column visible when scrolling horizontally, and it will freeze multiple rows on the selected cell. That is, it will freeze all the rows of the first column in the Excel sheet.

The Excel file with freeze panels function from IronXL

3.4 Unfreezing Panes using IronXL

The RemovePane function can be used to unfreeze rows and columns in the Excel sheet.

4. Conclusion

The IronXL library is a development library that provides all the advanced capabilities required for a complex Excel application. One great thing about it is that it offers developers and users a free trial, making it easy to determine if it meets their needs. IronXL is one of the fastest libraries available, and with just a few lines of code, a developer can easily learn how to create an Excel document and perform a variety of Excel operations. To learn more about IronXL, click on this IronXL main page, or follow this tutorial about reading Excel files for additional examples.