The Excel
developers anticipated some data-entry problems and came up with a nice way
of addressing the problem of determining where you are when entering data.
Sometimes it is easy to forget which row or column a particular number should
be entered. Excel uses the "split screen" technique to make it easier!
Let's look
at a specific example to understand the problem and see how Excel can help.
Suppose we have a teacher trying to keep grades in Excel.
The teacher has the names of students in a column and the different testing
events as column headings.
This might
be a small portion of the gradebook. In reality, there are
many more students and many more tests.
The teacher
is likely to find himself looking at a window of a portion of the spreadsheet
and forget which student row he is on or which test
column!
The purple represents
the cells containing the names and tests.
The black rectangle represents the current location of the Excel window.
The cell in the middle is on some row and some column....but which one?
Excel has two small
bars located in the top right and bottom right corners of the window.
The top bar will let you split the screen horizontally into
two sections.
The bottom bar lets you
split the screen vertically into two sections.
These bars may be pulled
out independently of each other. That is, you can use one split screen without
using the other. In this case we will use both bars.
Dragging
the Bars Out
We will click
and drag each bar into place. The Horizontal bar will be
dropped down just below the row containing the Test names and the Vertical
bar will be dropped to the right of the column containing the names of the
students. Technically, there are 4 windows.
Now, the
pleasant surprise. When you scroll to the right and down in the window containing
the places where you would enter grades, the window above the Horizontal
bar remains on the screen and the window to the left of the Vertical
bar remains on the screen. How easy it is to see who's grade should go where!
Two
questions might arise in using the Split Screen bars:
- What happens
to the printout if I choose to print with Split Screen
bars pulled out?
- How can
I remove the bars when I am finished data entry?
The printing question
is answered quickly - nothing! The printing process ignores
the location of the Split Screen bars. The second question requires reflecting
back on your Kindergarden days when the teacher said to put up your toys when
you finished playing with them. To remove the Split Screen bars simply drag
them back where they belong...back in their respective corners out
of the way.
