Mastering the Scroll Lock Key: Enable or Disable in Microsoft Excel

Quick Links

• What Does Enabling and Disabling Scroll Lock Do in Excel?
• Enable or Disable Scroll Lock When Using Excel
• Toggle Scroll Lock Without a Keyboard

Scroll Lock in Microsoft Excel makes your Up, Down, Right, and Left Arrow keys either move between cells or scroll the entire worksheet. We’ll show you how to switch between these functionalities on your Windows 10 or 11 PC.

Related: What Are the Sys Rq, Scroll Lock, and Pause Break Keys on My Keyboard?

What Does Enabling and Disabling Scroll Lock Do in Excel?

When you disable Scroll Lock and press the arrow keys , Excel lets you move between cells in your spreadsheet. For example, if you press the Down Arrow key, you go down a cell in your worksheet. This is usually the default behavior and allows for quick editing.

If you enable Scroll Lock, on the other hand, Excel lets you scroll your entire worksheet instead of individual cells. For example, if you press the Right Arrow key, your entire worksheet scrolls to the right.

Depending on what feature you feel comfortable using, you can keep Scroll Lock enabled or disabled on your computer.

Related: How to Fix Arrow Key Scrolling in Excel

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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 top-first row of your keyboard, to the right of the Print Screen key .

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When you press the key, you’ll see the Scroll Lock light turn on on your keyboard (if your keyboard has one). This indicates the option is enabled. To turn off Scroll Lock, press the same key again.

On a MacBook, you can use the key combination Fn+Shift+F12 to toggle scroll lock.

Toggle Scroll Lock Without a Keyboard

If your keyboard doesn’t offer a dedicated Scroll Lock key, use the on-screen keyboard to enable or disable the feature. Open that keyboard by accessing the “Start” menu, searching for “On-Screen Keyboard”, and selecting the app in the search results.

When you see the virtual keyboard, to activate Scroll Lock, click the ScrLk button. It will turn blue indicating the lock is enabled.

To deactivate the lock, click the same key again.

And that’s all there is to using the Scroll Lock in Microsoft’s spreadsheet program. We hope you find it useful.

Did you know you can remap the Scroll Lock button to make it even more useful?

Related: How to Make Your Scroll Lock Key Useful on a Windows 10 PC