Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Microsoft 365. 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: Adjusting Formulas when Pasting.

Adjusting Formulas when Pasting

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 23, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Microsoft 365

1

The Paste Special feature of Excel never ceases to be full of surprises. One way you can use the feature results in pasting formulas into cells. That may sound weird, but perhaps an example will clarify the behavior.

  1. Open a brand new workbook.
  2. Put some values in a few contiguous cells, and some simple formulas in others. You can put just a few; you won't need many. (For this example, I'll assume you put the content into the range of B3:D5.)
  3. In a different cell, separated from the range you created in step 2, put a very simple formula, such as =1.1.
  4. Select the cell you created in step 3 and press Ctrl+C. This copies the cell contents to the Clipboard.
  5. Select the range you set up in step 2 (B3:D5).
  6. Display the Home tab of the ribbon.
  7. Click the down-arrow under the Paste tool and select Paste Special from the resulting menu. Excel displays the Paste Special dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

    8. Figure 1. The Paste Special dialog box.

  8. Make sure the Formulas radio button is selected.
  9. Make sure the Multiply radio button is selected.
  10. Click OK. The cells are updated.

Take a look at how the target cells were updated. The formula from the source cell (step 4) was pasted into any formulas in the target range. If a cell in the target range contained a value instead of a formula, the value was converted to a formula and the source formula appended to it.

This can be a great way to use Paste Special when you want to maintain a trail of how you've modified the cells in a range.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (11209) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Adjusting Formulas when Pasting.

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

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 couple ...

Discover More

Printing a Draft of a Document

Need to print a copy of a document but you don't care if it looks as "pretty" as you want the final printout to look? You ...

Discover More

Putting Bold Words in an Index

There are several ways you can create an index in Word, but the first step is always to figure out what should go in the ...

Discover More

Solve Real Business Problems Master business modeling and analysis techniques with Excel and transform data into bottom-line results. This hands-on, scenario-focused guide shows you how to use the latest Excel tools to integrate data from multiple tables. Check out Microsoft Excel 2013 Data Analysis and Business Modeling today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Quickly Updating Values

If you need to update a bunch of values in a worksheet by a standard amount, you can use the Paste Special feature of ...

Discover More

Creating a Shortcut for Pasting Values

Excel's Paste Special command is used quite a bit. If you want to create some shortcuts for the command, here's some ways ...

Discover More

Dividing Values

When working with large numbers, you may need a way to quickly divide a range of those numbers by a specific value. ...

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.

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

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 eight minus 6?

2021-10-23 19:33:17

Sandeep

Great tip, Allen.

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.

Links and Sharing
OUR COMPANY
OUR PRODUCTS
OUR SITES
 

Copyright © 2024 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.