Sometimes when working in Microsoft Excel, there are situations where you want to fix the table header at the top, so that even when you flip the document down, it will always remain in the visible part of the monitor. This function is also necessary for printing documents on physical media, i.e. on paper, so that the header is visible on each printed sheet.
This article will talk about how to fix the header at the top of an Excel spreadsheet in various ways. You will also learn how to remove a previously pinned header. Let’s get started!
How do I fix the header at the top of a table
In the case where the header is at the top of the page and only takes up the very first line of the table, fixing it is fairly easy.
But if there are empty lines before the header, you have to delete them first, otherwise without this action it will be impossible to carry out the simplest fixing procedure.
So, to fix the header, you need to go to the “View” tab, then click on the “Freeze Top Row” button, which is in the “Window” sub-item.
Once you follow the steps above, your header will be fixed at the very top, and will not disappear from the screen as you scroll down the document.
How to fix a table header in Excel
In some situations, when the user needs to leave blank lines before the header, or, for example, when the header consists of more than one line, the method described above will not work and you have to use another function, which in implementation is not more complicated than the first option.
Click on the leftmost cell at the bottom of the header, then also go to the “View” tab, select the “Window” sub-item, and click on the “Freeze Panes” button to fix all lines above the cell we selected.
After we’ve done everything, the header has been fixed along with all the rows above it, and only the part of the table below it will remain movable.
How to remove a fixed table header
When attaching headers, you can use either the first or the second method, depending on the situation. But there is only one method to unpin the areas.
To remove the pinned areas, you must go back to the “View” menu and select the “Unfreeze Panes” item there.
After this simple action, the header will become normal and will scroll with the main content of the table.
How to print header on each page excel
Quite often there are situations when it is necessary to have the page header printed on each sheet. This, of course, can be done manually by copying and pasting the header in certain places in the table. But this method is rather inconvenient and time-consuming. Besides, if the user decides to do it that way, he or she may well break the structural integrity of the table and make a mess of the calculations. Fortunately, Microsoft Excel has a fairly easy and much safer way to place a header on each page of the spreadsheet that is printed.
First, we have to go to the “Page Layout” tab, and here select “Print Titles”.
After that, a window opens with the Page Setup with a pre-selected item “Sheet”, which is what we need. If for some reason you will automatically select a different item, you must manually select “Sheet”.
Here, under “Print Headers”, you will see a field called “Cross Lines” in which you must specify the coordinates of your header.
This may be difficult for a novice user to figure out, but a special helper has been designed with a logo in the form of a small table with an arrow pointing up to the left. It’s located on the right side inside the “Cross Lines” field.
After you click this little button, the Page Setup window will collapse and you’ll be on the page with your table. To select an area to print on each page, click and left-click on the numbers of all the rows you want.
To make sure you select the correct range, there is a small box at the top where the coordinates you have selected will appear.
After the rows have been selected, you return to the Page Setup window by clicking on the small button at the end of the field with the selected range of rows. Then you only have to click on the “OK” button.
So, you’ve just done everything you need to do to print the table header on each sheet, but nothing has visually changed on the page. To find out if your manipulation worked, you need to print the page or check in the document preview before printing.
To do this, go to the “File” menu, which is the first in the program. At the bottom you will see a list of things to do with the table. We choose the item “Print”.
Before you send the document to print in the preview, you can scroll down and make sure that each of the printed sheets will have the header you previously selected.
Conclusion
So, let’s recap. We’ve just learned about the different ways of attaching a table header to a page. There are three of them in total. Two of them help fix the header in the digital form of the document, and another one helps you automatically print it on each sheet.
The header can only be fixed using the Fix Top Line feature if it is located in the single, uppermost row of the spreadsheet at the same time.
In other situations, you’ll have to use area anchoring, which is just as easy to use as top row anchoring.
Fixing the header on the printed document is a bit more complicated, but Excel has an assistant that will make the task much easier and help you successfully select the row or range of rows that you want to print on each sheet.
