Inadvertantly Getting Rid of Frozen Panes

Steven has a worksheet with many rows and columns of data. He has frozen the first row and column by making cell B2 active and then freezing panes. This works as he wants it to. He can even save and close the workbook, and the panes are still frozen when he reopens the workbook. However, if Steven opens a new window for the workbook (View | Window | New Window), the new window does not have frozen panes. As he has frozen panes on many worksheets in this workbook, he has to be very careful about which window he closes first. If he closes the original window first, when he saves the workbook it saves all the unfrozen worksheets. Steven wonders if there is a way to get the new window to retain the frozen panes settings?

There is no setting in Excel that will handle what Steven needs to happen. The reason that the frozen panes are not saved is because FreezePanes (along with Zoom, Split, and a few other settings) are properties of windows, not of worksheets or workbooks. When a new window is created, the properties are not inherited from the original window.

You can, however, get around this behavior (and solve Steven's problem) by using a macro to do the setup for you. A very short approach is to forego using the ribbon tools to create your new window. Instead, add this macro to the QAT and use it to do the window creation:

Sub CreateNewWindow1()
    Dim rPane As Range

    Set rPane = ActiveWindow.VisibleRange(1)
    ActiveWindow.NewWindow
    ActiveSheet.Range("B2").Select
    ActiveWindow.FreezePanes = True
End Sub

The macro creates a new window, sets the visible cells equal to what is shown in the original window, selects cell B2 in the new window, and then freezes the panes.

This simple of an approach may not work, however, if your "pane freezing" needs are more varied. For instance, you may want a way to create a new window and have it match whatever panes were in the window that was active when you created the new window.

The following macro checks to see if the current window has a a fozen pane. If it does, then it figures out where it is frozen and uses that to set the frozen panes in a new window. If there are no frozen panes, then a new window is created anyway, and nothing there is frozen. In either case, the same cell is selected in the new window as was selected in the original.

Sub CreateNewWindow2()
    Dim iRow As Integer
    Dim iCol As Integer
    Dim rOldPos As Range

    iRow = 0
    iCol = 0
    If ActiveWindow.FreezePanes Then
        iRow = ActiveWindow.ScrollRow
        iCol = ActiveWindow.ScrollColumn
    End If
    Set rOldPos = ActiveCell
    ActiveWindow.NewWindow
    If (iRow > 0) And (iCol > 0) Then
        Cells(iRow, iCol).Select
        ActiveWindow.FreezePanes = True
    End If
    rOldPos.Select
End Sub

This code, again, could be used for creating any new windows you want. They accomplish what Steven needed done because they copy the frozen pane settings from the active window to the newly created window.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (13366) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, and 2013.