

Notice that both Cut and Paste, and Drag and Drop will also bring formatting from the source cell to the destination. Just select cell and hover the mouse over the cell boundary until the cursor changes. Cutting to the clipboard keeps all cell references intact and unchanged. Sometimes you don't want to copy a formula, but you want to move it to a new location.Ī simple way to do this is to use Cut and Paste instead of Copy and Paste. Note that this only works when you are copying a formula to the cell directly below. Just select the cell below the formula, and press the Control key with the Single Quote or Apostrophe key. Note that the cell references have not changed.Īnother way to make an exact copy of a formula is to use the keyboard shortcut Control-'. Now, if we move to another location on the worksheet and paste, we'll get an exact copy of the original formula.

Next, select the entire formula and copy it to the clipboard. To do this, first put the cell in Edit mode. The standard way to copy a formula exactly is to copy the formula as text, and then paste. Another way to make an exact copy of a formula is to use the keyboard shortcut Control-'. Note that the cell references have not changed. Then you can copy a formula and the references won't change.īut making cell references absolute just so you can copy a formula doesn't make a lot of sense. Next, select the entire formula and copy it to the clipboard. One way to prevent cell references in a formula from changing is to use absolute references. If we just copy the original formula, then paste, it stops working properly because the cell references have been updated based on the new location. Let's say you want to copy the formula that sums the hours to another location. The total is calculated using the SUM function on all cells above. Here's a simple spreadsheet that captures hours worked in a week and displays a total. Let's take a look at a few ways to do that.įirst, let's take a look at the problem. However, there are times when you'll want to copy a formula exactly so that cell references don't change. When you copy and paste formulas, Excel will change all relative references to reflect the new location of the formula.
