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How to find out if a cell is referenced in other cell in Excel?

Author Siluvia Last modified

How can we find out if a cell is referenced in any formulas or not? Excel actually has a built-in function called Trace Dependents, which can help you easily find out if a cell is referenced in any formulas.

Find out if a cell is referenced or not in Excel

Find out if a cell is referenced or not in Excel

It is quite easy to enable the Trace Dependents function in Excel, please do as follows.

1. Select the cell which you want to find out whether it is referenced or not by any formulas.

2. Then click Formulas > Trace Dependents. See screenshot:

Screenshot of selecting the Trace Dependents option under the Formulas tab in Excel

3. After activating the Trace Dependents function, you will see arrows displayed in the worksheet.

As the below screenshot shown, these two arrows indicate that the active cell A2 is referenced in two formulas which locates in cell B2 and cell B5.

Screenshot showing Trace Dependents arrows pointing from cell A2 to dependent cells B2 and B5

Notes:

1. If there is no formulas that refers to the active cell, a prompt dialog box will pops up as below screenshot shown.

Screenshot of Excel dialog box notifying no dependent formulas for selected cell

2. You can remove the arrows by clicking Formulas > Remove Arrows > Remove Dependent Arrows.

Screenshot showing the Remove Dependent Arrows option under the Formulas tab

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