|
To understand how scrolling works in Excel, imagine its humongous worksheet as a papyrus scroll attached to rollers on the left and right. To bring into view a new section of a papyrus worksheet that is hidden on the right, you crank the left roller until the section with the cells that you want to see appears. Likewise, to scroll into view a new section of the worksheet that is hidden on the left, you would crank the right roller until that section of cells appears.
Here are same ways to scroll around a worksheet:
- Use the horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the Worksheet area to scroll back and forth through the columns of a worksheet.
- Use the vertical scroll bar to scroll up and down through its rows.
- To scroll a column or a row at a time in a particular direction, click the appropriate scroll arrow at the ends of the scroll bar.
- To jump immediately back to the originally displayed area of the worksheet after scrolling through single columns or rows in this fashion, simply click the black area in the scroll bar that now appears in front of or after the scroll bar.
 | Keep in mind that you can resize the horizontal scroll bar making it wider or narrower by dragging the button that appears to the immediate left of its left scroll arrow. When working in a workbook that contains a whole bunch of worksheets, remember that you can end up hiding the display of the workbook's later sheet tabs while you're widening the horizontal scroll bar. |
 | To scroll very quickly through columns or rows of the worksheet, hold down the Shift key and then drag the mouse pointer in the appropriate direction within the scroll bar until the columns or rows that you want to see appear on the screen in the Worksheet area. When you hold down the Shift key as you scroll, the scroll button within the scroll bar becomes real skinny and a ScreenTip appears next to the scroll bar, keeping you informed of the letter(s) of the columns or the numbers of the rows that you're currently whizzing through. |
If your mouse has a wheel, you can use it to scroll directly through the columns and rows of the worksheet without using the horizontal or verticals scroll bars. Simply position the white-cross mouse pointer in the center of the Worksheet area and then hold down the wheel button of the mouse. When the mouse pointer changes to a four-pointed arrow, drag the mouse pointer in the appropriate direction (left and right to scroll through columns or up and down to scroll through rows) until the desired column or row comes into view in the Worksheet area.
| The only disadvantage to using the scroll bars to move around is that the scroll bars bring only new sections of the worksheet into view — they don't actually change the position of the cell cursor. If you want to start making entries in the cells in a new area of the worksheet, you still have to remember to select the cell (by clicking it) or the group of cells (by dragging through them) where you want the data to appear before you begin entering the data. |
|
