Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Filling References to Another Workbook.

Filling References to Another Workbook

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 25, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021


When you use Excel's Paste tool to create a reference to a cell in another Excel workbook (not another worksheet in the same workbook), Excel creates the reference in this manner:
='[Sales Master.xls]Sheet1'!$A$5
The presence of the dollar signs means that this is an absolute reference to the cell. Because of this, you cannot use any of Excel's automatic fill options, such as Fill Right (Ctrl+R) or Fill Down (Ctrl+D) or AutoFill, and get the results you expect. Instead, every cell in the filled cells will reference the exact same cell in the external workbook. The solution to the problem is to make a quick modification to the referencing formula before you do the fill. If you remove the dollar signs (both of them), then the formula is now relative, and filling will work the way you expect.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (10482) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Filling References to Another Workbook.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Deleting Unwanted Styles

Custom styles can be a great help in formatting a worksheet. You may, at some point, want to get rid of all the custom ...

Discover More

Signing a Protected Form

Tablet PCs are great for some uses, such as signing forms developed in Word. You may run into a problem with getting the ...

Discover More

Shortcuts for Basic Style Formatting

Want to get your text away from the explicit formatting you applied, back to the underlying formatting? Here are a few ...

Discover More

Program Successfully in Excel! This guide will provide you with all the information you need to automate any task in Excel and save time and effort. Learn how to extend Excel's functionality with VBA to create solutions not possible with the standard features. Includes latest information for Excel 2024 and Microsoft 365. Check out Mastering Excel VBA Programming today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Converting Text Notation Values to Numeric Values

If you convert a PDF file to an Excel worksheet, you may end up with some text values that need to have some conversion ...

Discover More

Calculating Monthly Interest Charges

Trying to calculate how much people owe you? If you charge interest or service charges on past-due accounts, there are a ...

Discover More

Finding the Smallest Even Value

When processing data in a worksheet, you may have a need to know what the smallest (lowest) even value in a range is. You ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 9 + 1?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.