Filling References to Another Workbook

Summary: When you create references to cells in other workbooks, Excel, by default, makes the references absolute. This makes it difficult to automatically fill a range of cells with relative references based on the created reference. This tip explains how you can get around this default Excel behavior. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.)

When you create a reference a cell in another Excel workbook (not another worksheet in the same workbook), Excel creates the reference in this manner:

='[Sales Master.xls]Sheet1'!$A$5

The presence of the dollar signs means that this is an absolute reference to the cell. Because of this, you cannot use any of Excel's automatic fill options, such as Fill Right (Ctrl+R) or Fill Down (Ctrl+D) or AutoFill, and get the results you expect. Instead, every cell in the filled cells will reference the exact same cell in the external workbook.

The solution to the problem is to make a quick modification to the referencing formula before you do the fill. If you remove the dollar signs (both of them), then the formula is now relative, and filling will work the way you expect.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2437) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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Filling References to Another Workbook