How to Freeze Panes in Excel (Alt+W, F, F)

On Windows, Alt then W then F then F freezes panes at the current selection. This is a ribbon access-key sequence rather than a chord — press the keys one after another, not together. On macOS there is no default keyboard route; freezing lives under the View menu. **Where you put the cursor first decides what gets frozen**, and this is what people get wrong. Excel freezes everything above and to the left of the selected cell. Select B2 and you freeze row 1 and column A. Select A2 and you freeze row 1 only. Select B1 and you freeze column A only. Select the middle of your data and you freeze a large and useless block. The rule is to click the first cell that should still scroll, then freeze. **The ribbon menu offers two shortcuts to the common cases.** Freeze Top Row and Freeze First Column ignore the selection entirely and do exactly what they say, which removes the selection question for the two situations that account for most use. In the Alt+W, F sequence these are the R and C options rather than the second F. **Only one freeze can be active per worksheet.** There is no freezing two separate regions, and applying a new freeze replaces the existing one rather than adding to it. If a sheet is already frozen, the same menu shows Unfreeze Panes instead — so Alt+W, F, F on an already-frozen sheet unfreezes it. That toggle behaviour catches people who expect the sequence to always freeze. **Freeze and split are different tools.** Freezing locks rows or columns so headers stay visible while the rest scrolls. Splitting divides the window into independently scrollable panes showing different parts of the same sheet, which is what you want for comparing row 5 against row 900. They cannot both be active, and split is the less-known and often more useful of the two for comparison work. **Freezing is a view setting stored per worksheet.** It saves with the file and applies to whoever opens it next, and each sheet in a workbook has its own. It does not affect printing at all — repeating headers on every printed page is a separate setting under Page Layout, called Print Titles, and assuming that freezing handles it is a common way to produce a twelve-page report where only page one has column headings. **Why the Windows shortcut is a sequence rather than a chord.** Freeze Panes has no dedicated key combination, so the access-key path through the ribbon is the only keyboard route. Alt reveals the key tips, W selects the View tab, F opens the Freeze Panes menu, and the final letter picks the option. It looks awkward written down and becomes quick with repetition, which is true of most ribbon access-key sequences. **Excel for the web behaves the same way but reaches it differently.** The View tab has the same three options and the same selection rule, though the Alt access-key sequence depends on the browser passing Alt through rather than claiming it for its own menus. Where it does not work, the ribbon is still one click away, and the freeze applied in the browser saves to the file and appears in the desktop application.