How do I stop Excel autoscrolling to fit the rows?

Copper Contributor

As mentioned in the title, how do I stop this if I just want a smooth scroll through the work sheet? I have cells containing some text and are pretty big. I want to be able to have half a cell in view without excel automatically scrolling up or down. I appreciate any help I can get.

16 Replies

@Kristofer645 Not sure what you mean "automatically scrolling up or down". Perhaps something like in the picture below. Cell A1 has "wrap text" activated, cell A4 has not.

 

Screenshot 2021-01-27 at 11.16.53.png

@Riny_van_EekelenThank you for your reply, I hope the picture makes it more understandable.

CheersExcel.png

@Kristofer645 So, you would want to freeze the bottom part of the first row when scrolling. I'm not sure but believe you can't do that. Freeze Panes displays the entire content of the visible rows, i.e. above the row where you put the "freeze marker".

 

A workaround could be to add a second header row that, for the cells with long texts only displays the last 30 characters or so. You can use the RIGHT function for that. Hide the first header row and freeze row 2. Example attached. Not sure, though, if this is practical for you.

Thanks. I just want the scrolling to stop when I do when using the scrollbar. As it is now, the program adjusts the window to fit the top row. It also means that one "scroll-click" with the arrows or mouse scroll wheel equals a certain amount of rows (I think three) instead of just distance.

@Kristofer645 

Smooth scrolling doesn't work, it is an idea in excel.uservoice.com but I didn't find the link.

Ok, thanks for your reply

@Kristofer645 

I am having the exact same problem.

Also there is room on the printed page to make the row longer to accommodate more text, but it won't let me do that either. 

Is there a character maximum that gets exceeded in each cell or something of that nature?

 

Not quite. It is not a freeze or pane feature. Rather it is a desire to have smooth, non-jumping scrolling. Imagine you had a single 2000px in height cell. Smooth scrolling means you could scroll and read the entire contents of that cell, slowly, but comfortably, by using the scroll feature. Instead, what excel does now is immediately skip to the next cell, preventing you from being able to read what's actually contained in the previous cell. Great for quickly jumping cells, bad for reading/editing content.

@Diego_B555 

Smooth scrolling is implemented

image.png

Windows Beta Channel Release Notes (office.com)

So far for Office Insiders only.

@Sergei Baklan Why it doesn't work? I'm on build 14326.20238 but Excel still snaps to edge of rows. Quite annoying.

Build number is not very important, you shall be on Beta channel. New functionality within the channel is deployed gradually, it could take from few days to few months after the announcement. 

Current Beta is

image.png

You don't have this problem if you use excel online.

@Kristofer645 

I am facing the exact same problem. How do I stop this?

I have the same problem.  Excel snaps to the the top of the cell when I release the scroll button, resulting in an inability to see the entire content of the cell.  It's only a problem with cells that have a large amount of data in them.  The only work around that I can figure out is the increase the width of the cell, so the entire contents is displayed on the screen, view the contents and then re-size the column width.  Argh! 

@Don_Zorn thanks for that suggestion!  I hadn't thought of that.  At least I'd be able to work in that cell and see it.

To See data that snap scrolling is being a pest with, sometimes I'll copy and paste into something like notepad++ and turn off word-wrap so I can smooth scroll. Only useful in some situations

 

This link has a few workarounds till people upgrade to a smooth scrollable version of Excel. https://www.excelcampus.com/tips/smooth-scrolling/

 

Don't know why MS took sooooo long to implement smooth scrolling. Been using Excel since the late 90s. Can't even recall if snap scrolling was always there or implemented later. But has been too long of a wait regardless.