Part II: Working with Formulas and Functions
the changes. Or the formula may return an error value, in which case you need to edit the
formula to correct the error.Notice that Excel color-codes the range addresses and ranges when you’re entering or edit-
ing a formula. This helps you quickly spot the cells that are used in a formula.Here are some of the ways to get into cell edit mode:■ Double-click the cell, which enables you to edit the cell contents directly in the
cell.
■ Press F2, which enables you to edit the cell contents directly in the cell.■ (^) Select the cell that you want to edit and then click in the Formula bar. This enables
you to edit the cell contents in the Formula bar.
■ (^) If the cell contains a formula that returns an error, Excel will display a small tri-
angle in the upper-left corner of the cell. Activate the cell, and you’ll see an error
indicator. Click the error indicator, and you can choose one of the options for cor-
recting the error. (The options will vary according to the type of error in the cell.)
You can control whether Excel displays these formula error indicators in the Formulas section of the Excel Options
dialog box. To display this dialog box, choose File ➪ Options. If you remove the check mark from Enable Background
Error Checking, Excel no longer displays these error indicators.
While you’re editing a formula, you can select multiple characters either by dragging the
mouse cursor over them or by pressing Shift while you use the navigation keys.
If you have a formula that you can’t seem to edit correctly, you can convert the formula to text and tackle it again
later. To convert a formula to text, just remove the initial equal sign (=). When you’re ready to try again, type the ini-
tial equal sign to convert the cell contents back to a formula.
Using Cell References in Formulas
Most formulas that you create include references to cells or ranges. These references enable
your formulas to work dynamically with the data contained in those cells or ranges. For
example, if your formula refers to cell A1 and you change the value contained in A1, the
formula result changes to reflect the new value. If you didn’t use references in your for-
mulas, you would need to edit the formulas themselves to change the values used in the
formulas.