What's an absolute reference?

There are many situations where absolute references are helpful.

This might be an hourly rate, a currency conversion ratio, or a constant of some kind.

In cases like this, you need a way to tell Excel not to change a cell reference.

Let’s take a look.

you could do this manually or using the keyboard shortcut F4.

Now let’s copy and paste the formula to see how cell references are affected.

As you could see, the address B9 is now fixed and has not been changed.

The relative reference D6 has been changed.

Just put the cursor in or next to the reference and press F4.

You’ll see dollar signs added to both the column and to the row.

Now both cell references are absolute and won’t change when we copy the formula.

Let’s give it a try.

Notice that we get the same result each time.

This is because each copy of the formula is still referencing the exact same cells as the first copy.

To summarize, relative references change when formulas are copied to new locations; absolute references don’t.

In the next lesson, we’ll look at a situation where this behavior is useful.