How can I lock the first row and first column of a table when scrolling, possibly using JavaScript and CSS?

calendar_today Asked Nov 17, 2008
thumb_up 8 upvotes
history Updated April 16, 2026

Question posted 2008 · +24 upvotes

How can I create a table that has its first row and first column both locked, as in Excel, when you activate ‘freeze panes’? I need the table to both scroll horizontally and vertically (a lot of solutions for this exist, but only allow vertical scrolling).

So, when you scroll down in the table, the first row will stay put, since it will have the column headings. This may end up being in a thead, or it may not, whatever makes the solution easier.

When you scroll right, the first column stays put, since it holds the labels for the rows.

I’m pretty certain this is impossible with CSS alone, but can anyone point me toward a JavaScript solution? It needs to work in all major browsers.

Accepted answer +8 upvotes

Oh well, I looked up for scrollable table with fixed column to understand the need of this specific requirement and your question was one of it with no close answers..

I answered this question Large dynamically sized html table with a fixed scroll row and fixed scroll column which inspired to showcase my work as a plugin https://github.com/meetselva/fixed-table-rows-cols

The plugin basically converts a well formatted HTML table to a scrollable table with fixed table header and columns.

The usage is as below,

$('#myTable').fxdHdrCol({
    fixedCols    : 3,       /* 3 fixed columns */
    width        : "100%",  /* set the width of the container (fixed or percentage)*/
    height       : 500      /* set the height of the container */
});

You can check the demo and documentation here

External references cited (3)

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+8 upvotes ranks this answer #106 out of 167 excel solutions on this site .
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