Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 15, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
Many people use Excel to keep track of important information, such as price sheets or cost tables. This data is then used to help calculate proposals or to figure out how much should be charged to customers. It is not uncommon to need to update information in these tables on a periodic basis. For instance, your company may decide that it will increase all prices in the company by ten percent this year.
If you have rather large pricing tables, you may not know the best way to update the prices by the ten percent. Obviously you could make a secondary table and then base the information in that table on a formula, such as =B3 * 1.1. This is actually more work than is necessary, however. Excel provides a much quicker way to update values in a table by a uniform amount. Simply follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Paste Special dialog box.
That's it! All the values in your pricing table now show a ten percent increase from their previous values.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2956) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Quickly Updating Values.
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