Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2016 August 1

= August 1 =

Can you change the names of the column headers in Microsoft Excel?
In any specific spreadsheet, can you change the names of the column headers in Microsoft Excel? The column headers are labeled "A", "B", "C", etc. Can I, for example, have it say "Date" (or whatever label) instead of "A", and "Amount" instead of "B" and so forth? When you have a long spreadsheet that extends down by many rows, and you scroll down many pages, you can see the data and the columns labeled "A", "B", "C", etc. When you scroll way down, however, it would be more helpful to see the data and the columns labeled "Date", "Amount", etc. Is this possible? I am using "Excel 2016". Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:52, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I do not think you can do exactly what you want; however, there is an option to "lock" the first rows, meaning they will continue to display even if you scroll down. You can then simply put the headers in the first row and lock that down. I cannot test it myself right now, but maybe these instructions works for you? Tigraan Click here to contact me 16:44, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Forgot to ping . Tigraan Click here to contact me 16:45, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know about Excel, but in LibreOffice this works - under View there is a "Freeze rows and columns" command, which works as described (notably, you have to click on the top left cell you don't want frozen; I must have tried it the wrong way seven times before RTFMing). Under View there is also a Column and Row Headers checkbox which you can use to shut off display of the A B C part, so there is no net loss of screen space by having these fixed label rows.  But of course some features will still reference them by the letters. Wnt (talk) 18:26, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Do what Tigraan says, and then hide the column headings. Uncheck the "Headings" checkbox, see at bottom on this doc: https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Show-or-hide-gridlines-on-a-worksheet-in-Excel-2016-for-Windows-94d09fd7-e3f8-43df-83c9-e7a21f2526cd manya (talk) 11:34, 5 August 2016 (UTC)