how do you make a cell absolute in excel for mac

How Do You Make A Cell Absolute In Excel Plus This Plus

You want to make sure that if you always want it to be absolute, to be preserved to be this exact cell G2, you want to turn that on in the formula right there.

So when you move or copy the formula into another cell, the references follow along.

But you can use absolute cell references to force the formula to always refer to the exact same cell, no matter where the formula is placed.

Lets take a look at the difference between Relative and Absolute cell references in formulas.

Lets populate this table with some sample data and lets just put some random numbers in here and lets go ahead and then perform some calculations based on this.

There we go. The great thing is that we can then copy and paste this formula from here to here and it will perform the calculation on a different row.

So in this case you can see it is showing you right here it is using these three cells to get that number.

I copied and pasted and the cell references changed to reflect the change in position.

I can continue doing this as much as I want and it will continue to change.

As I move the formula down one row it is going to move all of the references down one row as well.

Lets go and add a new row here, Im going to erase this formula, Im going to erase all the formulas here.

How Do You Make A Cell Absolute In Excel Plus This Plus

The formula now is going to be this plus this plus this times what is in here.

So B3 C3 D3 X G2.

The answer is going to be 86 which would make sense.

But here is what happens if I copy this formula and I paste it.

Now notice it has moved all of the references down one because they are all relative.

Down here it is these three and this one which is not what we want.

So we need to switch the reference for this cell from a relative one that would change, to an absolute one that will not change.

We want these to remain relative and this one to be absolute.

We can select that and we can select preserve row and or preserve column.

So in other words no matter where this formula gets copied and pasted this cell is going to remain exactly at G2.

It puts dollar signs in front of both the column and the row to let us know that these are now absolute.

This is pretty standard spreadsheet stuff going back decades using the dollar sign there.

If I look in here I can see there is the dollar sign.

G2. No matter where I paste this it is going to continue to use this absolute cell even though it is using these relative cells.

How Do You Make A Cell Absolute In Excel For Mac