How to use relative references - example 2

These kinds of totals often use formulas that are identical except for the cell references.

Let’s take a look.

Here we have a table that shows the number of widgets sold over a 12-month period.

There are six different kinds of widgets, so the table has six rows of data.

First, let’s add a total for each month on row 13.

This is a job for theSUM function.

Now let’s do the same thing to get a 12-month total for each widget pop in.

Our first formula is =SUM(C7:N7) and gives us 55 for Widget A.

The relative reference used by our formula has now been updated in each row.

To summarize, relative references are relative to the location of the formula they reside in.