Excel Header Row

Excel Header Row (Table of Contents)

• Header Row in Excel
• How to turn the Row Header on or off in Excel?
• Row Header formatting options in Excel

Header Row in Excel

Microsoft Excel sheet has the capacity to hold a million rows with a numeric or text dataset in it.

Row header or Row heading is the gray-colored column located on the left side of column 1 in the worksheet which contains the numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) where it helps out to identify each row in the worksheet. Whereas column header is the gray-colored row, usually it will be letters (A, B, C, etc.) which helps out to identify each column in the worksheet.

Row header label will help you out to identify & compare information of the content when you are working with a huge number of data sets when it is difficult to accommodate the data in a single window or page & to compare information in your worksheet of excel.

Usually, a combination of column letters and the row numbers helps out to create cell references Row header will help you out to identify individual cells which are located at the intersection point between a column and row in a worksheet in excel.

Definition

Header rows are the label rows which contain information that helps you out to identify the content of a particular column in a worksheet.

If the dataset table spans over several pages in an excel sheet print layout or towards the right if you scroll on & on, the header row will remain constant & stagnant which usually repeat itself at the beginning of each new page.

How to turn the Header Row on or off in Excel?

Row headers in excel will be always visible all the time even when you scroll the column data sets or values towards the right in the worksheet.

Sometimes, the row header in the excel will not be displayed on a particular worksheet. It will be turned off in several cases, the main reason for turning them off is –

• Better or improved appearance of the worksheet in excel or
• To obtain or gain the extra screen space on worksheets containing a large number of tabular datasets.
• To take a screenshot or capture.
• When you take a printout of a tabular dataset, the row header or heading makes things complicated or confusing with the printed data set because of interference of row & column header, therefore whenever you take print out, row header should always be turned off for each individual worksheet in the excel.

Now, let’s check out, how to turn off the row headers or headings in Excel.

• Select or Click on the File option in the home toolbar of the menu to open the drop-down list.

• Now, Click on Options in the list present on the left-hand side to open the Excel Options dialog box.

• Now, the Excel Options dialog box appears, In the left-hand panel of the excel option dialog box, select the Advanced option.

• Now, if you move the cursor down after advanced option, you can observe Display options for this worksheet section located near the bottom of the right-hand pane of the dialog box, by default, it shows the row and column headers option always checked or ticked in.

• If you want to turn off the row headers or headings in Excel, click on or uncheck the selection box of a checkbox in the Show row and column headers option.

• Simultaneously, you can turn off the row and column headings for additional worksheets in the open workbook or current workbook of excel. It can be done through selecting the name of another worksheet under the drop-down box located next to the Display options.

• Once you have unchecked the box, Click OK to close the excel option dialog box and you can return to the worksheet.

• Now, the above procedure disables the visibility of a row or column header.

Header Row formatting options in Excel

When you try to open a new Excel file, the row header or heading is displayed by default of normal style or theme font similar to workbook’s default format. This same normal style font is also applicable for all the worksheet in the workbook

The default heading font is Calibri & font size is 11. It can be can be changed based on your choice as per your requirement, whatever the font style & size you apply, it will reflect in all the worksheets in a workbook of excel.

You have an option to format font & its size settings, with various options in format settings.

• In the Home tab of the Ribbon menu. Under the Styles group, select or click on Cell Styles to open the Cell Styles drop-down palette.

• In the dropdown, under Good, bad & neutral, Right-click or select on the box in the palette entitled Normal – it is also called a Normal style.

• Click on Modify option under normal.

• Style dialog box appears, click on the Format in that window.

• Now, the Format Cells dialog box appears. In that, you can change the font size and its appearance i.e. Font style or size.

• Now, I changed the font style & size i.e. Calibri & font style to Regular, and I increased the font size to 16 from 11.

Once the desired changes are made, based on your preference, Click OK twice, i.e. in the format cells dialog box & style dialog box.

Note: Once you made changes in the font settings, you have to click on save option in the workbook, otherwise it will revert back to default normal style or theme font (i.e.default heading font is Calibri & font size is 11).

Things to Remember

• Row header (with row number) make things easier to view or access the content when you try to navigate or scroll to another area or different parts of your worksheet at the same time in excel.
• An advantage of header row is you can set this label row to print on all pages in excel or word, it is very significant & will be helpful for spreadsheets that span multiple pages.

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to Header Row in Excel. Here we discuss how to turn row header on or off and row header formatting options in excel. You can also go through our other suggested articles –

1. How to Row Limit in Excel
2. Excel Remove Duplicates
3. Dynamic Range | Excel Tutorials
4. Using Auto Format in Excel