Now before we get into creating some formulas there is something that I want to kind of recap.
We have talked about it just a little bit and even just kind of in passing but it is a very important concept as far as formulas are concerned.
Let us make sure that we have write this one down and I am going make it quick because we are going to talk about it again and again but I want to get this upfront out of the way that way formulas would go nice and smooth for us.
We are going to talk about cell references the way that you reference a value or a location within your Excel worksheet.
Got the basic structure got labels got some numeric values in there got some dates looking good.
I am going to zoom in just a little bit, If I hold down the control key on my keyboard and use the middle mouse wheel this will allow me to scroll in, You can also use the little scroll bar in the corner as well of your Excel interface will allow you to zoom.
Cell references. How do you reference content within an Excel document this might be common knowledge you may have done this many many many many many many times within your Excel work? If not, this is something that is going to follow you around instead of Excel in everything you do especially when it comes to formulas.
Somebody sends you this document, we save it, somebody saves it. They throw it into an e-mail and they send it to you, then they tell you “hey, I want you to go take-a-look at some values”.
Let us go take-a-look at the values for X month right or for X bill or for whatever.
You open this up, this is a simple one, so may not be that hard to find, but what if you had several months in there, they say go look at the month of August. Well, it like well which August am I supposed to be looking at. You can write them back and say well what year. Which month which year by should I be looking at? Hopefully, they get back to you. But would not it be nice if they told you exactly where to look. When you say February, I want you to go look at February values, where is February. Well February starts inside of Cell C3 and I can find that right, I clicked into February. up here in the top left corner of screen you can see C3.
These are our cell references cells.
They can be referenced as a standalone cell a single cell like we just did see (C3), wherever they can be referenced as a range of cells.
I can say I want you to look at all the February values. Well, that goes from C4 to C7 and I am just left clicking and dragging left click for drag
I have now selected that range of cells. Look at the box at the top and it still tells me just one cell C4 because that is the active cell within that selection.
But I have got that range of cells C4 to C7 maybe I want you to reference the entire table.
Well, that goes from A3 down to D7, that is the range of data that range of cells.
A couple of little shortcuts where if you can also reference non-contiguous or cells that are not touching, this will become very important when you get in the formulas, you get into charts, you get into Pivot tables, you get it into something, that you want to range you want to reference a range of cells that do not touch non-contiguous group of cells. I can say I want you to look at the headers and range.
Now, I also want you to look at food while food is three rows down from bills and rent. I can hold down the control key on my keyboard and I can select food => Now I can get a non-contiguous group of cells.
Again, this is great if you want to create charts and you do not want include all of the data.
I just want the headers the months there and I want rent and I want food. I will just get the data that you need.
Again, just really-quickly cell references you reference cells you reference the location of these values.
Again, it is very important for our next section when we get into formulas because that is what you are going to do, is you are going to reference the data by its cell reference. Get ready for it.
But take a moment and spend a little bit of time and identify where these different values are at, what cell what column row and address are they located in?