Excel Tip - Viewing a Worksheet

I have worked as an IT trainer for over 12 years. During those years I conducted a lot of classroom training, but I also did a lot of one-on-one. Here is one of my stories.

I often had what I would call “open project days.” My office had a conference table that could seat 4 people comfortably. Anyone could come in on those days and work on their Excel project and I was there to answer any questions. Sometimes people just used this to get away from their desks, but I never went through one of those days without being of some assistance. It usually did not happen in the form of a question, but rather an exclamation of frustration.
Jeanie mumbled “There are so many date columns, I can’t remember what goes where.”
“Do you not have headings?” I questioned, misunderstanding.
“Of course, I have headings, but when I scroll down to enter data, I can’t see my heading,” she responded in a frustrated tone.
“I have a cure for that,” I said as I walked over.

Here is what I showed Jeanie to make her data entry a little easier - Freeze Panes

Freeze panes allows you to lock specific rows and columns so that they will always be visible on screen no matter how far you scroll to the right or down.

Go to the View tab - Freeze Panes.

Excel tip: Wrap Text

Here is one I see a lot. When you want to shorten the column and there are two words in the header. I have seen 2 rows used for the header. 

No need to do this, use Wrap Text.

If you want text to appear on multiple lines in a cell, you can format the cell so that text wraps automatically, or you can enter a manual line break.

Wrap text automatically:  Select the cells you want to format.  On the Ribbon on the Home tab, click the wrap text icon.

Enter a line break manually: To start a new line of text at a specific point in a cell, click where you want to break the line, and then press ALT+ENTER.

Note:   If all wrapped text is not visible, it may be because the row is set to a specific height. Data in the cell will wrap to fit the column width and row height. You may need to adjust the row height to see all text.