Excel

Hello, Trev63 !

You must be just getting started with Excel and formulas. They are very powerful!

In our example, let's enter 1, 2, and 3 in the first column in rows 1, 2, and 3. It should look like below. There's a reason I didn't go to 5 yet! Figured I'd show you a trick! 😉

In the lower-right of the selection, notice that little box? It's called the quick fill handle. Excel uses the context of what is selected to guess what you might enter into other cells. Try dragging it down a few rows! I'll go to 10 in my example.

Now, let's say we want our formula to display the value of this cell in some other place in the Excel document as your question alludes to. Let's assume column E for this example.

Select cell E1. To start typing a formula, enter the equal sign character (=). This special character, when the first character of a cell, tells the application you intend to write a formula there. It can be a mathematical formula or all kinds of other cool stuff, but in this case we simply want to mirror the values.

Think in terms of math. If we want to represent the contents of cell A1 regardless of what it value is inside or if it changes. So it makes sense to refer to A1, just like you would x or y in math to represent unknown values.

With cell E1 selected, type =. Fan of the mouse? With this equal sign selected, go crazy selecting cells with it! Or you can type them by their reference as I have been. In this case, I will just click A1 with the mouse.

Now to commit the formula to cell E1, which will simple display whatever is in A1 and update whenever it changes, press enter.

Remember our friend the quick-fill handle? That little box in the lower-right? Why select E1 again (you pressed enter afterall!) and use the quick fill handle to drag down 10 rows? 🙂

You can review the magic that happened by selecting any of the cells in the E column with your mouse and viewing the "formula" bar. I'll screenshot it so you know what I'm referring to.

I hope this is helpful to someone!

 - Ed