Cell References

When you created the sales spreadsheet, you selected a range of cells to AutoFill. If we put 100 for the quantity in the first cell and 105 in the next, Excel fills down the series and add 5 more to each cell.  If you wanted a different forecast you could enter new quantities in the first and second cells and use the AutoFill again.

This could get old very fast. It is also a rather inflexible method of changing the data.

There is a better method: reference cells.

 

Reference cells set up one place to enter the data. All of the other equations and spreadsheets that depend on that data look it up in the reference cells.