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How to position the first item of an Excel FIND at the top of the display

Anonymous
2025-03-30T08:20:28+00:00

I have a large worksheet with ~12K entries, one column being family name. I work with the file permanently sorted on that column. I often need to scan all rows having a particular family name but when I do a FIND on that name Excel invariably positions the resulting rows starting in the middle of the display, which means I often have to scroll down to see the rest of the occurrences of that name (in many cases there are several dozen).

I'd like the first row resulting from such a FIND to be displayed at the top so that I can see more entries (which would often be all of them) without having to scroll.

Can this be done, and if so how? (I've searched in Excel but can't find the relevant option, if indeed there is one.)

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-03-30T19:31:19+00:00

    If this would work, you can place the active cell at the upper left of the display with a shortcut that runs the following macro.

    Sub UpperLeft() 

    Application.Goto ActiveCell, True 

End Sub

    ( True to scroll through the window so that the upper-left corner of the range appears in the upper-left corner of the window.  )

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-03-30T20:52:40+00:00

    Actually filtering works reasonably well in some cases, e.g., when the family name I search on has no variations or all the variations come after it alphabetically (like if I search on JOHNS, the likes of JOHNSON etc. come after it). But if I search on SMITH, for example, I get a bunch of family names that contain SMITH but precede it alphabetically, and then I would need to deselect those variations).

    Overall I think FIND as it currently operates is probably going to work better than filtering, allowing for some exceptions depending on the alphabetics of family names.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-03-30T14:42:06+00:00

    Instead of using Find, perhaps use Autofilter?

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-03-30T10:13:17+00:00

    Actually a FIND ALL commences the display at the very bottom of the displayable area, ditto for any particular one I select from the found list.

    I just want to visually scan all entries having a given family name and optimize the navigation to do that but from what you've mentioned that's not possible.

    Thanks anyway for letting me know.

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  4. Andreas Killer 144.1K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2025-03-30T08:53:28+00:00

    There is no way to influence this behaviour.

    Perform a FINDALL and the dialog shows a list of all occurrences, if you select an item in that list, Excel scrolls to the data row automatically.

    You can also use the Arrow keys, Home, End and e.g. CTRL+A in that list to quickly navigate or select multiple items.

    Andreas.

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