Is there a way to freeze panes in Excel and still see comments?

[AtomicHaggis]

I am really hoping someone can help me with this one! I have a basic Excel worksheet with comments attached to a number of the column headers. These comments contain criteria relating to information that will be entered below each heading. Since the sheet is fairly long, I want to freeze the panes to make the book more user friendly – but I would also like the comments to display in full. As I am sure you have figured out, when I freeze the panes and then scroll, the comments are cut off the farther I scroll down. This is making me crazy!! Is there any way around this? I have tried resizing the comments and increasing the area that I “freeze” but it loses some of the “user friendly” qualities I still need. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
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Any advice or tips would be most appreciated! Thank you so much in advance for your time and efforts! <o></o>

 

[Andy B]

A couple of options that may work for you:

1. Instead of using comments use Data>Validation. Allow Any Value and type your comment in the Input Message Box.

If you then select the header cell you will see the comment and can scroll down without losing it. If you click on a cell further down the list to edit it you only need to click the header cell to reveal the comment again. The header cell could be colour formatted to identify if it contains a comment.

2. Goto the following link to "Show Comments in Centre of Active Window". Unfortunately you need to click the header cell to reposition the comment to the centre so I personally think option 1 is more tidy.

Link: http://www.contextures.com/xlcomments03.html#Centre

Hope this helps.