How to Freeze Rows or Columns in Google Sheets


By Varghese David

In Google Sheets, if you are working with large amount of data, you have to scroll down or to the right to reach at the far end of the data. If you have headers in the first row or column, scrolling down or to the right will make your headers disappear.

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To make it easy to navigate through the sheet, you can freeze rows or columns in Google Sheets. The frozen rows or columns will remain visible when you scroll far down or to the right in the Sheet.

You can freeze row or columns in the following ways:

Using the mouse to freeze rows or columns.
Freeze rows or columns using the options from the Google Sheets Menu.

  1. Using the Mouse to Freeze Row or Columns
    google-sheets-freeze-rows
    This is by far the easiest method to freeze rows or columns in Google Sheets. Let’s find out how:

Move your cursor to the top-left corner of the Sheet where Gray-colored bar is located. To be specific, the Gray-colored bar is below Formula Bar (fx bar), above Row Number 1 and to the left of Column A. You will notice that the bar has thick dark-gray borders in the bottom and right-side of the bar.
When you hover the cursor over the dark-gray borders, the color of the border will turn Sky Blue and a hand symbol will also be visible. But, the color of the border will change either in the bottom border or the right-side border depending on the position of the cursor. If your cursor is hovering on the bottom border, the color of the bottom border will change from Dark Gray to Sky Blue. Likewise, if you hover over the right-side border, the border on the right-side will turn Sky Blue.
To freeze the rows or columns, you have to drag the bottom border or right-side border by holding the left-click of the mouse. By dragging down the bottom border of the bar, you can freeze the rows. To freeze the columns, you have to drag the right-side border of the bar to the right. You can choose to drag it upto one or more rows or columns depending on your requirement.
Freeze Rows or Columns using the Options from the Google Sheets Menu
In this method, you will be using the View Menu of Google Sheets to freeze the rows or columns. This method is simple but doesn’t match up to the ease of the Drag & Drop method.

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How to Freeze the Top Row as your Header Row in Google Sheets
Go to View menu in Google Sheets.
Click on “Freeze” from the dropdown list and select “1 row” from the available options.
The top row is now locked & frozen.
How to Freeze Multiple Rows in Google Sheets
Assuming that you want to freeze 7 rows, you have to follow the steps below:

Select any cell in the 7th row of Google Sheet.
Go to View menu in Google Sheets.
Click on “Freeze” from the dropdown list and select “Up to current row (7)” from the given options.
You have successfully frozen Row Number 1 to 7.
How to Freeze One Column in Google Sheets
Go to View menu in Google Sheets.
Click on “Freeze” from the dropdown list and select “1 column” from the available options.
Your first column (A) is frozen successfully.
How to Freeze Multiple Columns in Google Sheets
Supposing you want to free 4 columns in your Google Sheet, you should follow the steps below:

Select any cell in the 4th column of Google Sheet.
Go to View menu in Google Sheets.
Click on “Freeze” from the dropdown list and select “Up to current column (D)” from the given options.
You have successfully frozen Column (A) to (D).
Can we freeze both rows and columns simultaneously in Google Sheets?
You cannot freeze both rows and columns simultaneously in Google Sheets. But, you can freeze both rows and columns separately. For example, you can first freeze the rows using the method I explained earlier and then, you can free the columns separately.

How to Unfreeze Rows or Columns in Google Sheets
To unfreeze the rows or columns, you can either use the Google menu option or use the Click-and-Drag option using mouse.

You can unfreeze the rows or columns in Google Sheets by clicking and dragging the Dark Gray border of the frozen rows or columns back to its original location(top-right corner below Formula (fx) bar.

If you want to use the Google menu option, you can follow the steps below:

Go to View menu in Google Sheets.
Click on “Freeze” and select “”No rows” from the given options to unfreeze the rows.
Select “No Columns” from the available options to unfreeze the columns.
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