Skip to main content

How to copy formula without changing its cell references in Excel?

Normally Excel adjusts the cell references if you copy your formulas to another location in your worksheet. You would have to fix all cell references with a dollar sign ($) or press F4 key to toggle the relative to absolute references to prevent adjusting the cell references in formula automatically. If you have a range of formulas need to be copied, these methods will be very tedious and time-consuming. If you want to copy the formulas without changing cell references quickly and easily, try the following methods:


Copy formula without changing its cell references by Replace feature

In Excel, you can copy formula without changing its cell references with Replace function as following steps:

1. Select the formula cells you will copy, and click Home > Find & Select > Replace, or press shortcuts CTRL+H to open the Find & Select dialog box.

2. Click Replace button, in the Find what box input “=”, and in the Replace with box input “#” or any other signs that different with your formulas, and click the Replace All button.
Basically, this will stop the references from being references. For example, “=A1*B1” becomes “#A1*B1”, and you can move it around without excel automatically changing its cell references in current worksheet.
     

3. And now all “=” in selected formulas are replaced with “#”. And a dialog box comes out and shows how many replacements have been made. Please close it. See above screenshot:
And the formulas in the range will be changed to text strings. See screenshots:

4. Copy and paste the formulas to the location that you want of the current worksheet.

5. Select the both changed ranges, and then reverse the step 2. Click Home> Find & Select >Replace… or press shortcuts CTRL+H, but this time enter “#” in the Find what box, and “=” in the Replace with box, and click Replace All. Then the formulas have been copied and pasted into another location without changing the cell references. See screenshot:


Copy formula without changing its cell references by converting formula to text

Above method is to change the formula to text with replacing the = to #. Actually, Kutools for Excel provide such utilities of Convert Formula to Text and Convert Text to Formula. And you can convert formulas to text and copy them to other places, and then restore these text to formula easily.

Kutools for Excel - Packed with over 300 essential tools for Excel. Enjoy a full-featured 30-day FREE trial with no credit card required! Download now!

1. Select the formula cells you will copy, and click Kutools > Content > Convert Formula to Text. See screenshot:

2. Now selected formulas are converted to text. Please copy them and paste into your destination range.

3. And then you can restore the text strings to formula with selecting the text strings and clicking Kutools > Content > Convert Text to Formula. See screenshot:

Kutools for Excel - Supercharge Excel with over 300 essential tools. Enjoy a full-featured 30-day FREE trial with no credit card required! Get It Now


Copy formula without changing its cell references by converting to absolute references

The formulas changes after copying as a result of relative references. Therefore, we can apply Kutools for Excel’s Convert Refers utility to change the cell references to absolute to prevent from changing after copying in Excel.

Kutools for Excel - Packed with over 300 essential tools for Excel. Enjoy a full-featured 30-day FREE trial with no credit card required! Download now!

1. Select the formula cells you will copy, and click Kutools > Convert Refers.

2. In the opening Convert Formula References dialog box, please check the To absolute option and click the Ok button. See screenshot:

3. Copy the formulas and paste into your destination range.

Note: If necessary, you can restore the formulas’ cell references to relative by reusing the Convert Refers utility again.

Kutools for Excel - Supercharge Excel with over 300 essential tools. Enjoy a full-featured 30-day FREE trial with no credit card required! Get It Now


Copy formula without changing its cell references by Kutools for Excel

Is there an easier way to copy formula without changing its cell references this quickly and comfortably? In actual, Kutools for Excel can help you copy formulas without changing its cell references quickly.

Kutools for Excel - Packed with over 300 essential tools for Excel. Enjoy a full-featured 30-day FREE trial with no credit card required! Download now!

1. Select the formula cells you will copy, and click Kutools > Exact copy.

2. In the first Exact Formula Copy dialog box, please click OK. And in the second Exact Formula Copy dialog box, please specify the first cell of destination range, and click the OK button. See screenshot:

Tip: Copy formatting option will keep all cells formatting after pasting the range, if the option has been checked.
And all selected formulas have been pasted into the specified cells without changing the cell references. See screenshot:

Kutools for Excel - Supercharge Excel with over 300 essential tools. Enjoy a full-featured 30-day FREE trial with no credit card required! Get It Now


Demo: copy formulas without changing cell references in Excel


Kutools for Excel: Over 300 handy tools at your fingertips! Start your 30-day free trial with no feature limitations today. Download Now!

Best Office Productivity Tools

🤖 Kutools AI Aide: Revolutionize data analysis based on: Intelligent Execution   |  Generate Code  |  Create Custom Formulas  |  Analyze Data and Generate Charts  |  Invoke Kutools Functions
Popular Features: Find, Highlight or Identify Duplicates   |  Delete Blank Rows   |  Combine Columns or Cells without Losing Data   |   Round without Formula ...
Super Lookup: Multiple Criteria VLookup    Multiple Value VLookup  |   VLookup Across Multiple Sheets   |   Fuzzy Lookup ....
Advanced Drop-down List: Quickly Create Drop Down List   |  Dependent Drop Down List   |  Multi-select Drop Down List ....
Column Manager: Add a Specific Number of Columns  |  Move Columns  |  Toggle Visibility Status of Hidden Columns  |  Compare Ranges & Columns ...
Featured Features: Grid Focus   |  Design View   |   Big Formula Bar    Workbook & Sheet Manager   |  Resource Library (Auto Text)   |  Date Picker   |  Combine Worksheets   |  Encrypt/Decrypt Cells    Send Emails by List   |  Super Filter   |   Special Filter (filter bold/italic/strikethrough...) ...
Top 15 Toolsets12 Text Tools (Add Text, Remove Characters, ...)   |   50+ Chart Types (Gantt Chart, ...)   |   40+ Practical Formulas (Calculate age based on birthday, ...)   |   19 Insertion Tools (Insert QR Code, Insert Picture from Path, ...)   |   12 Conversion Tools (Numbers to Words, Currency Conversion, ...)   |   7 Merge & Split Tools (Advanced Combine Rows, Split Cells, ...)   |   ... and more

Supercharge Your Excel Skills with Kutools for Excel, and Experience Efficiency Like Never Before. Kutools for Excel Offers Over 300 Advanced Features to Boost Productivity and Save Time.  Click Here to Get The Feature You Need The Most...

Description


Office Tab Brings Tabbed interface to Office, and Make Your Work Much Easier

  • Enable tabbed editing and reading in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Visio and Project.
  • Open and create multiple documents in new tabs of the same window, rather than in new windows.
  • Increases your productivity by 50%, and reduces hundreds of mouse clicks for you every day!
Comments (39)
Rated 5 out of 5 · 1 ratings
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Solução perfeita par atualização de milhares de células, grandes intervalos. Foi a melhor solução para o meu caso, visto que não cabia duplicar planilhas nem copiar e recortar fórmulas.
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
ขอเซ็ตหย่อ สูดต่อ สูดผ่อ ซีหม่อ สองห่อ ใส่ไข่
Rated 5 out of 5
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Amazing - thank you
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
thank you so much, brilliant idea!!
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Great tip, saved me hours of work. Thanks
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Ah! This reminds me of my days programming a mainframe computer, in the mid 1980s! All changes to text had to be done by "find/replace". There was no such thing as putting the cursor where you wanted, , replace text. The find/replace functions in editors are very powerful tools, if you use them properly. Thank you for the tip, which helped me solve my problem!
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Thank you so much!! Your "Copy formula without changing its cell references by Replace feature" tip worked perfectly and did the job in like 10 seconds. Brilliant!!
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
SUPERB IDEA thnks for help me i am very happy...
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Wow, works like a charm. Thank you so much!
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
astonished this is what i was looking for. you are smart
There are no comments posted here yet
Load More
Please leave your comments in English
Posting as Guest
×
Rate this post:
0   Characters
Suggested Locations