Excel 2016 Cell referencing and AutoFill Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Student Tech Bytes. My name is Liza and today we are here for Excel Cell referencing and Autofill. Today s session will be recorded and uploaded to ask USQ. Student Tech Bytes are short, sharp, focused How do I sessions. Today we only be talking about Excel Cell Referencing and AutoFill. By the end of this session you have increased your digital literacy. So the session today we will be talking about Cell referencing and why it s important. We will look at the 4 different types of Cell referencing and after that I will be showing you some timesavers; AutoFill and FlashFill. When we talk about Cell Referencing we talk about the location of either a single cell or a range of cells, so in other words it's the address. The address is made up of two parts so we have our row and our column. For example, we can have cell A1. When writing formulas, it helps us identify the cells we are including in the formula. Cell referencing is important because when we understand cell referencing it helps writing formulas effectively. It s also important when copying formulas and when editing the formula, you can go in to certain parts so you don't need to delete the formula. We can go into the formula and change different parts. As I mentioned earlier we have 4 cell referencing types. We have Relative, Absolute, Mixed or 3D. The first one we're going to talk about is the Relative cell referencing. That's the default. So what happened is when we copy the formula either across or down the formula changes automatically based on the position of the row or column. If you have rows and columns that you want to add up you put in the first formula and you copy across, that s what it s doing Relative cell referencing. If we copy A1+B1 and copy it down it would automatically update to A2+B2. We then have Absolute. This is where the cell doesn t change when yu copy the formula. So, the reference is actually the cell address. When we are writing our absolute referencing in our formula it uses two dollar signs. So, you can see we have a dollar sign in front of the A so that's freezing the column and one in front of the five so it's freezing the row. For this example, this cell is frozen every time.
We then have mixed, so either the row or column is relative and the other is absolute. What that means is again if we look at this example when we re talking about mix referencing it uses one dollar sign. If you look at that first example the dollar sign is in front of the A, so that means column A will freeze. Looking at the other example the dollar sign is in front of the 5, so row 5 is frozen no matter how far row 5 goes across. The last one I want to talk to you about his 3D referencing. That's what we use when we work with multiple worksheets. If you have 4 or 5 worksheets and then you have like a summary worksheet and you want to add up those 4 worksheets and put the answer in the summary worksheet you would use 3D referencing. And you would see it as Sheet1 in your formula if you haven t named the worksheet and then it s the very first cell. Then we are going to talk about AutoFill. When we talk about AutoFill later why would we use it? If you have to enter in a lot of data particularly repetitive data, you don't want to be typing the same stuff all the time. You might want to have dates on the top of your Excel sheet. You don't want to have to be putting in January, then February, then March. We can get Excel to actually fill those cells for us. How AutoFill works is that Excel will pick up the pattern. By default, if we use months or days of the week Excel knows that it s a pattern and it will fill across or down. If you want increments of 2 all you would have to do is start a pattern and copy it down or across. We will be looking at that shortly. Then we have FlashFill. This is new for Excel 2016 (not 2013). FlashFill recognises a pattern in your data. If your data has consistency it will work well. You do have to remember, particularly when we use FlashFill that it's not Dynamic. So, in other words if your data changes, the column that we use for the FlashFill won t automatically update. We will see examples of that towards the end. Let s go ahead and have a look at some examples. For the people, here in class we have a document already open, but the online participants feel free to follow along or create your own data. The first thing I want to talk about is Relative. I have this data sheet and I want to work out my weekly gross pay. So, what we do need to do is to start writing the Formula is typing in equals (=). By typing in = it tells Excel that we want to start writing a Formula we don't want to enter text or numbers. We always have to start with a equals if you are going to create a formula. Then with our formula I want to multiply C6 by D6. I could go in and actually typed C6. If I do that there s potential for a typing error. So, what we do is we
use the point method. Click into the first cell doesn't (it doesn t matter what cell we click into first, C6 or D6) and click into the first cell that we want to include in the formula. Then we use the multiplication and then click into cell D6 which is the hourly rate. You'll notice when you are building a Formula each cell is in a different colour. If your formula is quite long and using a lot of cells you can see what cells you have included. If we press enter, the formula is completed and then and then we copy down we've got out answers in there now. What has happened is that Excel has picked up the relative cell referencing. We ll go in and have a look at the formulas. Now I can see by clicking into individual cells and in the formula bar. I don t want to do that. I want to have a look at the formulas as a whole. So what I'm going to is press the control key down on my keyboard and then press the Tilda key to the left of number one on your keyboard. So the little horizontal squiggly line (~). If we go Control plus Tilda it will display formulas for us. We don't have to go into those individual cells and look at the formula. If you are looking for an error somewhere we can see them all in one go. When we talk about Relative Cell referencing, remember I said that it knows to goes down or across the cell. What Relative Cell referencing does is that it calculates the direction of the cells. So for this example, it has calculated 2 to the left by 1 to the left and when that formula is copied down it does the same calculation, 2 to the left by one to the left. To turn the formulas back off again it s Control plus Tilda (~). Control plus Tilda to turn off and Control Tilda to turn back on The next type of Cell referencing that we are going to talk about is Absolute cell referencing. There will be times in your formula that you want a particular cell to be included in the formula everytime. So here in class I m going to move onto the next worksheet. Same thing, I have my timesheet for my staff and I want to work out their bonus. So the formula that I m going to use is my weekly gross pay by the bonus of 15%. We type in equals then E7 multiplied by and then F5 which is our 15%. We want that 15% to be included everytime we do this calculation. Now if I press Enter and I knew nothing about cell referencing and you went to copy the formula down. We ve copied the formula down and notice that we get these errors. If we show our formulas, Control plus Tilda. Where the original formula has been entered, it s always going to be correct. It s anything after that. If we look at the relative referencing, it s going 1 to the left by 2 up. When we have copied it down, it is still doing the same thing, 1 to the left by 2 up. But when we go 2 up it s the cell with the word Bonus, so it won t multiply numbers by words. I m
going to turn my formulas off. What we have to do is we have to make cell F5 absolute, in other words we have to freeze it everytime. I will just delete those formulas that we did before and let s put them in again. Equals our Weekly gross pay multiplied by our 15%. Remember we need to make this particular cell (F5) absolute or frozen. Remember that it had the dollar signs. I could manually come into the formula bar and put in my dollar signs. Because I m still clicked into that cell F5, if I press F4 on my keyboard can you notice in the formula bar or even in the cell itself, as I keep pressing F4 it toggles through all the different types of cell referencing. I have none and there s my absolute where I have the two dollar signs, so the row and the column is frozen. I ll press Enter and copy the formula down. Turn your formulas on to check and you can see here the weekly gross pay has multiplied by the 15% everytime. That s what Absolute cell referencing means. I ll turn my formulas back off again. Because we've used absolute cell referencing anything that we put into this cell (F5) it will update so I've decided that their bonus should be 20%. If I change it to 20% and press Enter, can you see that my formula has actually updated. So there is some benefits to use this absolute cell referencing questions about absolute. Alright so the thing we are going to talk about his Mixed referencing. I ll just make this a little smaller so you can see it. So, I have this table of data here and essentially what I want to do is work out a bonus scheme. For every column C, D, E and F (every item that they sold they are going to get $5 per item as a bonus. Now there is one formula that I can use to calculate this entire table. If we run through everything that we have done so far. I m going to click into cell C19. Let s start typing in our formula equals and we are multiplying C6 by C18 and press Enter. If you want to copy a formula down in a table like this, you have to go across first and then down. I can see here straight away that obviously, something is wrong. If I look at this formula here, so control + Tilda to turn my formulas on remember the default is Relative. Here we have C16 by C18 which means it s gone 1 up by 13. Looking at the next formula, being relative it s gone 1 up by 13 up. It won t work because it s going to keep multiplying the answer above it. Relative or copying the formula isn t going to work. So, Control + Tilda to turn the formulas off. I'm going to delete everything again and then let's try, ok well we want to freeze the row, so equals C6 multiplied by C18, that s the one I want to freeze, F4, Enter. Copy across and we copy down.
If I just click through here that my E18 cell has been frozen and it s multiplying by each one of the Prada items down the bottom. If I go across to the next column it s still going to be multiplying by 5. I could create a formula for each one of those columns and have D18, E18 and F18 as the Absolute. But remember I said that there is one formula that we can create to work this table out. Absolute will not work for us. So we have to look at the Mixed referencing. We ve talked about freezing a particular cell but do we need to freeze a row or do we need to freeze a column? I m going to go equals, C6 multiplied by C18. Does anyone know we need to do? Do we need to freeze the row or the column? We want this column to be multiplied each time by our sales of the top. We want to freeze the row. Remember to freeze the row you have to have the dollar sign in front of the row. So, for this example we want the dollar sign between the C and the 18. Because the 18 indicates the row. So, I can use my F4 to toggle. There s my C18, press Enter and we go across and down and then we go down. So, if I turn my formulas on I can check that this. So, my row 18 has actually frozen. So it will multiply by anything in that row. The next thing I want to talk to you about before we talk about 3D referencing is working with multiple worksheets. If I have look at these 4 worksheets here and a pay summary. Based on those 4 weeks I have a pay summary. I basically want to know how much I have paid in those 4 weeks. A good thing about with working with multiple worksheets is that I can use Grouping. When I group worksheets, it allows me to do the same thing once. For example, if I have worksheets and I want to change the formatting or create formulas. What I can do I group my worksheets, apply the formula or apply the change, it will then apply throughout all the other worksheets. However, everyone of the worksheets that you use has to be exactly the same. In other words, they have to be placed in exactly the same spot in the worksheet. If I have a look at my 4 worksheets here, my data starts in column B. If for instance this worksheet started in column C and I m trying to apply formulas it wouldn t work because I might looking at column B but in this particular worksheet it s column C. You need to make sure that your data is placed in the same spot in each of the worksheets. So how do we group our worksheets? We have to select the worksheets. For this example I m in Worksheet 1, hold the Shift key down and click on the last worksheet and for this example it s week 4. They are all now the same colour. I can now click between those worksheets and they are all grouped. So, if I was to
make a change, for instance, change the colour of the font to purple and I click onto my other worksheets, it s made the change through all 4 worksheets. So, you can see why grouping is important. But remember to make sure that the data is in all the same spot on each worksheet, particularly when it comes to formulas it won t work. Once I ve made the change, let s do some calculations on our worksheets first. What I want to do is add up column D, F and H. And what we will do is use the AutoSum today. I m going to click into my cell D11. On my Home tab and on the ribbon, all the way to the right in the Editing group, I have the AutoSum button. I ll click on AutoSum and what I want to do is reselect those ranges of cells that I want to add up. Can you see here it s saying SUM(D5:D9), so add up cells D5 through to D9 and we re going to press Enter. Then I want to add F9, so let s do the same thing. Back to the AutoSum, reselect my numbers making sure I don t have any black cells, press Enter. The last one I want to do is H9, so same thing, click into the cell, AutoSum, reselect, Enter and I ve done that. Because my worksheets are still grouped, and if I click through, I ve gone and done those formulas. Can you see a benefit to grouping worksheet? Once I ve made the changes, I want to ungroup. If you only had worksheets in the group, you can right click and you can ungroup your sheets. Alternatively, you can click off your grouped worksheets onto another worksheet outside of the group. What I can do is, I can click on the Pay Summary worksheet here and you can see that I have actually ungrouped my worksheets. They are now back to their individual tab colours. A benefit to using 3D referencing. If I have a look at this example here, I have 4 weeks worth of salary and I just want to have a summary for January. So what we will do is use 3D referencing. You want to make sure beforehand that your data in the worksheets are in the same place. When we do 3D referencing there s an order to get it to work. I want Total hours worked, Total Gross Wages Paid and Total Bonus Paid with totals. I could go in and manually put in a formula and put in these numbers. I m going to click into cell B4 and we are going to use AutoSum again. We have AutoSum here on our Home tab and another place to find the AutoSum button is if you go to your Formulas tab, you have the AutoSum there. So you can choose to use AutoSum from your Formulas tab or from your Home tab. So I m in cell B4 and I m going to click on AutoSum. Then what I m going to do is click back into my first worksheet, which is W1. I m going to click into the cell
that I want to add up. So, I m adding up D11, then we have to group. So I m going to hold my Shift key down and click on W4. If I have a look at the formula, the function is adding up worksheets W1 through to W4 and up all cells D11. Once I ve checked that I m going to press Enter and I m going to check my formula again. Let s now do the Total Gross Wages paid. I m in cell C4, click AutoSum. By default, if you click on AutoSum, Excel will pick up the nearest number which we can see here is the Total Hours Worked. I will ignore that. I m going to go back to my W1. I m going to select my cell F11, then we are going to group. So, it s AutoSum, click into the cell of the first worksheet and then group. You have to do it in that order. We will then press Enter So again, I m going to check my formula, W1 through to W4, cell F11 and press Enter. Let s do it again. D4, AutoSum, it s selected the nearest numbers again, ignore that, back to W, cell H11, then we group and press Enter. So, that s working with multiple worksheets. And that s working with those 4 cell referencing options. Let s go and have a look at AutoFill. Remember when we were looking at the slides, I said the AutoFill was a great timesaver. It saves us from having to add the same type of text over and over again. I ve got a timesheet here and I want to start putting in some data. I want to add Monday through Friday. I will type in Monday and press Enter. All I m going to do is click back into the cell where I typed in Monday. On the drag handle, hold the left mouse button down and drag. You ll notice that as I drag I get a preview of what is being filled into the empty cells. I ll finish dragging down and let go of the mouse button. That is a pattern that Excel already has inbuilt. This is the same for the dates. Again, all I have to do is start with a date. If I enter 01/01/2017. On the fill handle, I drag down and you can see the preview of what dates will be filled in. So that s AutoFill. Users have used AutoFill before but not realised what it is. It s Excel picking up a pattern. If I put in numbers 2, 4, 6 and I want the list to fill in increments of 2, I select the group of numbers and on the fill handle drag it down. Again it s picked up the pattern. If I do start a list with increments of 2 and I only type in 2 and copy
down, it will only copy the same number because I haven t given Excel a pattern to copy. The last thing I want to show you is FlashFill. This is something new. I have a table here with First names, Last names and Middle names. What I want to do is combine the First and Last name columns to be their full name in one column. I m going to type in the first person s name and then press Enter. Then I m going to start writing the next name. Can you see as I type I have a greyed-out list of the data that I want to display in the column. Again, we have prompted a pattern for Excel. We can then press Enter, we then have the details displaying. So that s using FlashFill. Remember when writing formulas use the point method by clicking into the cell, so there are no errors for typing mistakes. Grouping. Remember if you are going to group worksheets and make a global change make sure that they are in identical spots in the worksheet. That s all for today s session. Thank you everyone for coming along.