Excel question- "Hey you two columns, scroll to the right with me."

Factual Questions
1

So… I hope this is a relatively easy excel question.

I want to set up a spreadsheet that the first two columns on the left will scroll to the right as I do. So I can compare the data in columns A and B side by side columns further down the line.
Also the same concept but at the top- I’d like the top two rows (which are used as headers) to scroll down as I a scroll down so that the title of the column is always visible no matter how far down I scroll.

Does that make sense? I had worked with one before that did that but now I have to build my own spreadsheets and have no idea how to employ this function.

2

Window | Freeze Panes

3

Or …
Windows Split

4

When you freeze panes, select the column to the right of the last one you want to stay visible. If you select a single cell, you will freeze the panes in both directions ( up & down, right and left).

5

alternatively you can use windows - split, then mouse the split to where you want it and then choose freeze.

6

I’m glad this is here because I have an excel question, too and don’t want to start a whole thread about it…

I have a spreadsheet that calculates time for me and the formulas have all of a sudden stopped working. For instance, I put 2:00 in Column A, and 3:00 in column B. The formula in Column C would look something like this: +B1-A1 and the result would be 1:00. I copied this formula down the column so that the same formula will be performed for each of the rows.

This was all working fine until about a week ago. All of a sudden, the formulas don’t work anymore! Well, they work if I go in and do each of them by hand, but the copying doesn’t work anymore. When I try to copy the formula, all that shows up is 0:00

Does anybody know why my formulas would all of a sudden stop working?? Any quick fixes?? Anybody??

HELP!!??

7

i can’t think of any way to replicate your problem, Citygirl, but you’re welcome to email me a copy of the excel sheet in question if you like - probably alot easier to troubleshoot it if it’s in front of me.

8

hey as long as we are asking Excel questions I have a dumb one.
I use spread sheets that quite often have a couple of words of text in them. If the entire column has words of about the same length I will size the column to the largest single entry. however right now I have one column that has many 3 letter entries, and one two word 10 letter entry. I don’t want to resize this entire column for just one entry. How do I get a second line in the same cell?
here is an example of what I want



Entry ->         Smith / Jones
Shows as ->        th / Jo
What I want ->      Smith
                    Jones
9

I’m not sure I fully understand what you want, but you realize that you can increase the height of a row? Just use your mouse to pull down the bottom of the row you want to enlarge.

10

Format Cell, Alignment tab, select word wrap.

11

Rick:

highlight the cell (and any others with the same problem)
Format - Cells (or right click, Format Cells)
on the Alignment tab, choose Wrap Text

12

Email’s on the way. Thanks!

13

Citygirl,

I believe if you turn Automatic Calculation back on, you’ll find this problem fixed (Tools - Options - Calculation).

14

The answers so far just told you how to format the text into more than two rows. But the text is still in one row. In fact, you might end up splitting a word where you don’t want to. If you really want a second line in the same cell and you want to control where the split occurs as well as the formatting that applies to each row, here’s how:
– Go to the cell where you want to split the line of text.
– Now go to the edit area at the top of the screen where the text appears. (Actually you can do this right in the cell too, but I save a click by going to the edit area.)
– Put the cursor where you want the line split to occur.
– Hit Alt-Enter.
Voila.

15

It Worked! even though I don’t remember turning Automatic Calculation off to begin with

Thanks!!

16

um… wot?

this works, and is a great shortcut (i love keyboard shortcuts and despise the mouse). however, it’s worth noting that what you’re actually doing by pressing alt-enter is turning on the “wrap text” formatting for this particular cell (as described above) and adding a LF character to the contents of the cell. this will in fact force a new line, but will not prevent any other new lines being made in the same cell automatically.

my pleasure

17

Thanks guys, I guess I did not make myself clear, I was trying to get one row of cells to be two lines high to accomdate the Smith Jones entry, instead of making the column wide enough to accomdate it.
Wpord wrap is what I was looking for.
Thanks.

18

What may have happened is you had this spreadsheet open and opened another spreadsheet that had calculation set to manual. In my experience, Excel sets the calculation on all open spreadsheets to however the most recently opened spreadsheet is set. Then, without realizing it’s changed, you save the spreadsheet and it sticks until you change it back. If anybody knows how to make it keep the calculation the same as the *first *opened sheet I’d sure like to know how. This annoys me to no end.