While Excel is amazing when it comes to analyzing a large amount of data, navigating through this data could be a challenge.
For example, if you have daily sales data and you’re going through this data row by row, and you have a need to go back to the top of the data set, you may find yourself using the mouse scroller or going back row by row again using the arrow keys – which I’m sure you know is not very efficient (and quite irritating to be honest).
Thankfully, there are a couple of shortcut methods you can use to quickly go to the top of the page.
Keyboard Shortcut to Go to the Top of the Page
The easiest way to go to the top in the worksheet in which you’re working in Excel is by using the below keyboard shortcut
Windows Keyboard Shortcut
Control + Home
To use this keyboard shortcut, hold the Control key and then press the Home key.
This will instantly take you to cell A1, which is at the top left part of the worksheet (irrespective of where you are in the worksheet)
Mac Keyboard Shortcut
If you’re using a Mac, you can use the below keyboard shortcut to jump to cell A1 in Excel (which is the top of the page in the worksheet)
Control + Fn + Left Arrow Key
Go to Cell A1 (Top of the Page) Using the Name Box Trick
Another quick and easy way to quickly go to the top of the page in Excel is by manually entering the cell address in the Name Box.
Name Box is a small field that is on the left of the formula bar.
For example, if you want to quickly go to A1, simply enter A1 or a1 (it’s not case sensitive) and hit the enter key.
It would immediately take you to A1.
While the keyboard shortcut method that I covered above is still a faster way to quickly jump to the top of the page, one benefit that Name Box offers is that you can choose which part at the top of the page you want to go to.
For example, you may not want to always jump to cell A1. If you want to go to say F1, just enter F1 in the Name Box and hit the enter key
Using the Freeze Panes Technique
One common reason people often want to go back to the top of the page is that they have their headers in the first row (or in the first couple of rows).
When you scroll down the data and the headers are not visible, you can quickly lose track of what data point you’re referring to.
If you’re in this situation, while you can still use the keyboard shortcuts and the Name Box technique I showed above, you would be better off using the Freeze Panes functionality in Excel.
Freeze Panes Allows you to lock the first row (or the first few rows) so that these are always visible in the worksheet. even when you Scroll down a lot, these rows would remain visible.
This also helps you in quickly going to the top of the page as you can simply click on cell A1 or any cell in the first row as it will always remain visible.
Once you have selected the cell in row 1, hit the down arrow key and you will be at the top of the page with all the data visible to you.
Below are the steps to lock the first row in Excel:
- Select cell A1
- Use the keyboard shortcut – ALT + W + F + F
The above keyboard shortcut would apply the freeze pane for the first row and now it would always be visible when you Scroll down in the worksheet.
So these are some quick shortcuts you can use to quickly go to the top of the page in Microsoft Excel.
I hope you found this article useful and will help you in improving your productivity while working with excel.
Other Useful Excel Keyboard Shortcuts:
Thank you for the fantastic article Mr. Scott! Very well written! For the Keyboard Shortcut to go the front of the page (Word) or back to A1 (Excel), you can also use the Mac Shortcut on a Windows Laptop, Control (Strg) + Fn + Left Arrow Key, as a “Home key” may not always be available – and if you want to mark everything on top of you, for example at a certain point of the document (Word/Excel), you can use Control (strg) + Fn + Left Arrow Key + Shift 🙂