Copying Formulas while preserving references

When you cut and paste formulas from a range of cells, the cell references within the formulas will be automatically adjusted. Here, we show how to work aroud this ‘feature’.


For the purposes of illustration - we consider the simple example below - with the four formulae in B7:E7

copyformula1.jpg

WIth B7:E7 selected, we select Edit - Find & Replace We will be replacing the “=” characters with “#” in each formula. Now, we have a range of text values that will be unchanged in a cut/paste or copy/pastee operation.

copyformula2.jpg

We can now copy/paste on the range of text values.

copyformula4.jpg

The last step is to use Find & Replace to restore the original formulae by replacing “#” with “=”, reversing the previous Find & Replace operation.

copyformula5.jpg

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