2007 Microsoft® Office System Inside Out

Working with Formulas

We’ve covered most of the basics you need to know about how formulas and references work. In the following sections, we’ll dig deeper, covering how to use defined names, intersections, structured references, and three-dimensional (3-D) formulas.

Naming Cells and Cell Ranges

If you find yourself repeatedly typing cryptic cell addresses, such as Sheet3!A1:AJ51, into formulas, we’ll show you a better approach. You can assign a short, memorable name to any cell or range and then use that name instead of the cryptogram in formulas. Naming cells has no effect on either their displayed values or their underlying values—you are just assigning "nicknames" you can use when creating formulas.

After you define names in a worksheet, those ...