How to Limit Scroll Area in Excel (3 Easy Ways)

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Limit the Scroll area in Excel is a useful trick. Sometimes, you might want to hide some cells from your viewer. Also, for practical purposes, you might want to stick to the specified area. That’s where this article comes in handy.


How to Limit Scroll Area in Excel: 3 Easy Ways

There are many ways we can limit the scroll area in Excel. We will show you three easy and simple ways for that. So, let’s begin.

For that, we have made a data set containing World Cup Winners and Runner Ups.

Dataset - how to limit scroll area in excel


1. Limit Scroll Area Manually

You can manually select the scroll area in the Excel Sheet.

Select the Properties option from the Developer tab.

Limit Scroll area in Excel

A window like this will show up.

Now, in the ScrollArea box write the area that you want to scroll. Doing so, all other areas will be fixed and your selected area will remain active.

We used (A1:E30) as our area.

Selecting for Scroll Area

Note: This is a short-term solution. When you close the file and reopen it again the changes will be lost.


2. Use of Hide Option from Context Menu to Limit Scroll Area

You can limit the scrolling area by hiding cells. It’s an easy and permanent solution.

First, select Column F and press CTRL+SHIFT+Right Arrow simultaneously.

Thus, all the Columns right of E will be selected.

Then, Click Right on the Mouse. A similar window like this will open. And select Hide in the option. Thus, all the columns from F will be hidden.

Hide Cells in Excel

For rows, we want all the cells hidden from row 31.

So, select row 31 and press the CTRL+SHIFT+Down Arrow simultaneously.

And all the rows from 31 will be selected.

Now, Click Right on your Mouse and Select Hide.

Hide cells to limit scroll area

Thus, your scroll area will be limited up to Column F and Row 30.

Read More: [Fixed!] Excel Scrolling Too Many Rows 


3. Use of VBA Code to Limit Scroll Area

You can use the VBA code to limit the scroll area. We will use a VBA code in this section to demonstrate the process.

Steps:

First, Select Visual Basic from the Developer bar.

VBA code to limit Scroll Area

Now, Click on Module.

And, write the following formula and close the window.

Sub controllScrollarea() 
Dim sk As Worksheet
Set sk = ActiveSheet 
sk.ScrollArea = "$A$1: $E$30"
End Sub

VBA code to limit scroll area in Excel

Here, I have used the ScrollArea method of a worksheet to limit the scrolling area within A1 to E30 range. You can change the range as you want.

Then, Select Macros from the Developer tab. A box will open containing the Macro.

Now, Select the Macro and press Run.

Doing so, you will be constrained to scroll in the specified area.

You will see that you can scroll within the mentioned cells.

Read More: How to Scroll One Row at a Time in Excel


Download Practice Workbook

You can download and practice this workbook.


Conclusion

That’s all for the article. I’ve tried to show you some easy but handy ways to limit the scroll area in Excel. I hope you will find all these three methods useful. There are other articles on this website related to this problem that you might find useful. If you have any queries regarding any of these methods, feel free to leave them in the comment section.


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Sourav Kundu
Sourav Kundu

Sourav Kundu, BSc, Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, BUET, Bangladesh, has been a part of the ExcelDemy project for 1 year. He has written more than 70 articles and 12 comments for ExcelDemy. Currently, he is working as a Exceldemy team member writing contentful articles. His work and learning interest revolves around data analysis. He has been working Microsoft Office Suites, and MS Excel for Data Analysis, and developing Excel Applications. Besides he has been working on Excel VBA and Excel Dashboard to learn more about data analysis.

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