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Scroll Lock in Microsoft Excel causes the up, down, right, and left arrow keys to move between cells or scroll the entire worksheet. We’ll show you how to switch between these features on your Windows 10 or 11 PC.
RELATED: What are the Sys Rq, Scroll Lock and Pause Break keys on my keyboard?
What does enabling and disabling scroll lock do in Excel?
When you disable Scroll Lock and press the arrow keys, Excel allows you to move between cells in your spreadsheet. For example, if you press the down arrow key, you move down one cell in your worksheet. This is usually the default behavior and allows for quick editing.
If you enable Scroll Lock, on the other hand, Excel lets you scroll the entire worksheet instead of individual cells. For example, if you press the right arrow key, the entire worksheet scrolls to the right.
Depending on which feature you’re comfortable with, you can keep Scroll Lock enabled or disabled on your computer.
RELATED: How to Fix Arrow Key Scrolling in Excel
Enable or disable scroll lock when using Excel
One way to toggle Scroll Lock in Windows is to press the dedicated Scroll Lock key on your keyboard. This key is usually located on the top first row of your keyboard, to the right of the Print Screen key.
When you press the key, you’ll see the Scroll Lock light come on on your keyboard (if you have one). This indicates that the option is enabled. To deactivate Scroll Lock, press the same key again.
On a MacBook, you can use the Fn + Shift + F12 key combination to toggle scroll lock.
Toggle scroll lock without keyboard
If your keyboard doesn’t offer a dedicated scroll lock key, use the on-screen keyboard to enable or disable the feature. Open that keyboard by accessing the “Start” menu, searching for “On-Screen Keyboard” and selecting the app in the search results.
When you see the virtual keyboard, to activate Scroll Lock, click the ScrLk button. It will turn blue indicating that the lock is enabled.
To deactivate the lock, click the same key again.
And that’s all there is to using Scroll Lock in Microsoft’s spreadsheet program. We hope you find it useful.
Did you know you can remap the Scroll Lock button to make it even more useful?
RELATED: How to make your scroll lock key useful on Windows 10 PC
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