How to Disable (or Enable) Scroll Lock in Microsoft Excel
Scroll Lock in Microsoft Excel allows your 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.
In this section:
What does enabling and disabling scroll lock do in Excel?
When you turn off scroll lock and press the arrow keys, Excel lets you move between cells in your worksheet. For example, pressing the Down Arrow key moves you down one cell in your spreadsheet. This is usually the default behavior and allows for quick editing.
If you enable scroll lock, on the other hand, Excel allows you to scroll your entire worksheet instead of individual cells. For example, if you press the Right Arrow key, your entire spreadsheet scrolls to the right.
Depending on which feature you feel comfortable using, you can keep scroll lock enabled or disabled on your computer.
Enable or disable scroll lock when using Excel
One way to toggle scroll lock on Windows is to press the dedicated scroll lock key on your keyboard. This key is usually located in the first top row of your keyboard, to the right of the Print Screen key.
When you press the key, you will see the Scroll Lock light on your keyboard (if your keyboard has 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 enable Scroll Lock.
Toggle scroll lock without keyboard
If your keyboard doesn't have a dedicated scroll lock key, use the onscreen keyboard to enable or disable the feature. Open this keyboard by going to the "Start" menu, searching for "On-Screen Keyboard" and selecting the app from the search results.
When you see the virtual keyboard, to activate Scroll Lock, click on the ScrLk button. It will turn blue indicating the lock is on.
To deactivate the lock, click the same key again.
And that's all there is to using scroll lock in Microsoft spreadsheet. We hope you find this useful.
Did you know you can remap the Scroll Lock button to make it even more useful?
