Freezing Panes
Now it is possible to freeze panes, jolly handy it is too. If you are not familiar with the function, then a good way to think of it is like this. You pin rows and columns, forcing them to be static and not move. But everything below the row and to the right of the column can move.
For our spread sheet, we only want the very first row not to move. So regardless of where we go in the spread sheet, the column headings will always be visible. To enable this functionality, we have to navigate to a specific cell. In our case that will be A2, where we just select the cell by clicking it.
We then navigate to the top of the Excel screen and select, “Window” this will give us a drop down and we can just select Freeze Pane. Now when we scroll, the heading line will stay there referencing what each column is.
So the freeze works on the row above the selected cell, in our case row 1 as we selected cell A2. It also works on the column to the left of the selected cell, however in our case we selected column A – so there are no columns to the left.
At this point we have a spread sheet that will do what we need, it will handle as much data as you need – well up to a million rows or so. But if you are using Excel for any length of time, there are a number of other functions that you should know about and the first one is the free search.
Excel free search
In Excel there is a free search function, very simple to use – the dialogue box is self explanatory. It is activated by pressing “Ctrl + f”, then we simply type what we want in the dialogue box and press return or enter. This will find the first occurance of the search string, but will leave the dialogue box open. Clicking on the Find Next button will find the next occurance of the search string. The dialogue box will not close until the user clicks the close button.
What next
As we can see, Excel is more than capable of being a log book until you find an application to suit. In the event that you do, all you should have to do is export your data from Excel and import it to whatever application you are going to use. Even the online logging web sites will generally accept a comma separated values file from Excel for import. Or you could upload to Google Sheets or use Office 365 to maintain online access to your log if you wanted. But it is important to recognise that you are outting your data and log on someone elses computer.
Following On
I intend to extend this series of posts to cover using Excel, or one of the other already mentioned spread sheets as a permanent log. So watch for further posts, although as I’ve covered off the matter of using old software and hardware to do this. When I continue these posts on Excel, it may be on later software and hardware.