Office 2013 In Depth

Relative Versus Absolute Referencing

Understanding how Excel references cells in your worksheets when you specify them in a formula or function is fundamental to the overall understanding of how best to use formulas and functions in your sheets. If you are ever going to copy a formula or function in a sheet (and you will need to), you need to understand how both relative referencing and absolute referencing work in Excel.

When you create a formula or function and designate cell references, Excel uses a form of referencing called relative referencing. When you copy a formula or a function from one cell to another cell, the cell references in the formula or function are rewritten to adjust to its new location. For example, Figure 13.3 shows a simple ...