17th October 2001

We all excel at something. I make good coffee. Gretchen can speed read. But Microsoft Excel excels at making numbers easier to manipulate. I've always argued for strong, smart user interfaces. When we sit down to use a program, we shouldn't have to think about how to complete our tasks. However, sometimes intuition steers us wrong. When you enter a number into Excel and tap the ENTER key, by default, it will change focus to the cell directly below. What if you think it should move to the right? Click Tools | Options | Edit. Now, see the 'Move selection after Enter' field? Either change it to another direction or turn the feature off altogether. Let's say you've got too much vertical data in your spreadsheet. Combine this with countless columns of data and you may very well forget the labels for each set. No worries! Select the row beneath the one you'd like to lock into place, then click Window | Freeze Panes. This will allow you to scroll up and down without having to refer back to each column's designation. You can do the same thing horizontally. Remember, to select an entire range of cells, single click the appropriate letter or number.