Tricks to Enable / Disable Scroll Lock in Excel Think: Imagine your report is due in an hour. You are working along in Excel, everything is going well, but suddenly you notice that you can no longer move around properly in your spreadsheet. You press the arrow keys, but instead of the cursor moving to another cell, the entire worksheet seems to be moving.
What happened? Solution: Don’t panic, relax! Because it is an issue of Scroll Lock. Let’s see how to solve this problem.
Before we learn how to enable or disable scroll lock in Excel, we must learn what is scroll lock?
What is Scroll Lock?
The Scroll Lock is a setting that determines what happens when you use the Arrow Keys on your keyboard in Excel. When Scroll Lock is off (It is a default setting), the Arrow Keys allow you to navigate and select different cells within a worksheet. In another case when Scroll Lock is enabled, the Arrow Keys will instead “scroll” through the active window. You will not be able to navigate to different cells (using the Arrow Keys of the keyboard), instead, you will only be able to change the viewing area, similar to clicking the arrows on the ScrollBars. In the picture given below, we can see the evil “Scroll Lock” is visible in the status bar of Excel Program.
There are times when you may want Scroll Lock enabled, though in general, most Excel users only activate this feature by accident.
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Now let’s walk through the process of enabling and disabling the scroll lock.
Step 1:
- Imagine that Scroll Lock is enabled and it is visible in the status bar.
- Now we need to disable it. Right click on the Status Bar of Excel Window.
- In the Pop-up Menu Scroll Lock is checked and showing On. Step 2: Uncheck Scroll Lock to disable it. After you uncheck it, the Scroll Lock would not be visible on the Status Bar as shown in the picture below. Now Scroll Lock is disabled and the Arrow Keys allow us to navigate and select different cells within this worksheet.Read More: How to use VLOOKUP Formula with Example
Scroll Lock still enabled?
After completing above processes if your Scroll Lock is still enabled, then you need to Off Scroll lock from your Key Board. In Key Board Scroll Lock is visible as “ScrLk”. This key works similar to a “caps lock” key.
Press “ScrLk” key to Off Scroll Lock. Now Scroll lock is disabled from excel sheet. Don’t have “ScrLk” key in Key Board? Don’t Worry. If you don’t have “ScrLk” key on your keyboard, then you can use the on-screen keyboard from your windows by doing one of the following steps based on your windows:
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Case Study 1: For Windows 10
- Click Start >Settings>Ease of Access>Keyboard.
- Click the On-Screen Keyboard button to turn it on.
- When the on-screen keyboard appears on your screen, click the “ScrLk” button.
Case Study 2: For Windows 8.1
- Click start and then press CTRL+C to display the Charms bar.
- Click Change PC Settings.
- Select Ease of Access>Keyboard.
- Click the On Screen Keyboard slider button to turn it on.
- When the on-screen keyboard appears on your screen, click the “ScrLk” button.
Case Study 3: For Windows 7
- Start>All Programs>Accessories>Ease of Access>On-Screen Keyboard.
- When the on-screen keyboard appears on your screen, click the “slk” button.
In Excel, my laptop (with no scroll lock key) uses Fn+C to toggle scroll lock on and off.
Great ! Its work like charm.