Enter a Formula in a cell and the formula calculates until it is overwritten. When the overwrite is removed / cell cleared, the formula automatically returns. And as an extension to this allow the formula to reference the value entered into the cell to be used as a variable in the formula. …

How Excel is set up, a cell can have either a value or a formula; the formula can not refer to its own cell. And you can then reference cells in relative positions to that cell such as – where your cell is F13 and you need to reference G12 from it.

Go to the Formulas tab, click the arrow next to Error Checking, and point to Circular References The last entered circular reference is displayed there. Click on the cell listed under Circular References, and Excel will bring you exactly to that cell.

Select the worksheet you want to check for errors. If the worksheet is manually calculated, press F9 to recalculate. If the Error Checking dialog is not displayed, then click on the Formulas tab > Formula Auditing > Error Checking button.

To activate and use circular references you must first activate them by checking Enable iterative calculations option under the File menu. Go to File > Options > Formulas > Calculation options in Excel 2016, Excel 2013 and Excel 2010.

Click the “Formulas” tab in the ribbon menu at the top of the Excel window. Click the small arrow next to the “Error Checking” button in that area. Move your mouse over “Circular References” and the last entered circular reference will appear. Click on this reference to jump to that cell on the spreadsheet.

Remove or allow a circular reference

1. If you can’t find the error, click the Formulas tab, click the arrow next to Error Checking, point to Circular References, and then click the first cell listed in the submenu.
2. Review the formula in the cell.

A circular reference refers to a formula, that visits its own or another cell more than once in its chain of calculations, creating an endless loop which slows down your spreadsheet significantly.

A mixed cell reference is either an absolute column and relative row or absolute row and relative column. If you copy or fill the formula across rows or down columns, the relative references adjust, and the absolute ones don’t adjust.

Circular references aren’t a bad thing in itself: you can use them to achieve complex calculations that are otherwise impossible to do, but first you must set them up properly.

In Excel 2007, click the Microsoft Office Button, click Excel Options, and then click the Formulas category. In the Calculation options section, select the Enable iterative calculation check box. To set the maximum number of times Excel will recalculate, type the number of iterations in the Maximum Iterations box.

Iteration means repeatedly carrying out a process. To solve an equation using iteration, start with an initial value and substitute this into the iteration formula to obtain a new value, then use the new value for the next substitution, and so on.

The Enable Iterative calculations option allows us to do so. Go to File > Options. Excel Options dialog box will appear. Click Formula and tick the checkbox enable iterative calculations and click OK.

Maximum Iterations determines how many times Excel is to recalculate the workbook, Maximum Change determines the maximum difference between values of iterative formulas. Note that entering a smaller number here means more accurate results.

Type a date in Cell A1 and in cell B1, type the formula =EDATE(4/15/2013,-5). Here, we’re specifying the value of the start date entering a date enclosed in quotation marks. You can also just refer to a cell that contains a date value or by using the formula =EDATE(A1,-5)for the same result.

When two or more cells are selected and at least one of them contains a numerical value then the sum of the values is automatically displayed in the status bar. This allows you to obtain a temporary result from a function without having to actually use a formula.

How to recalculate and refresh formulas

1. F2 – select any cell then press F2 key and hit enter to refresh formulas.
2. F9 – recalculates all sheets in workbooks.
3. SHIFT+F9 – recalculates all formulas in the active sheet.

Note: Using the Refresh All command also refreshes all external data ranges in the active workbook, and it affects both visible and hidden worksheets in the active workbook. To refresh all the pivot tables, and external data ranges, in the active workbook at the same time: On the Ribbon, click the Data tab.

Automatically refresh data at regular intervals

1. Click a cell in the external data range.
2. On the Data tab, in the Connections group, click Refresh All, and then click Connection Properties.
3. Click the Usage tab.
4. Select the Refresh every check box, and then enter the number of minutes between each refresh operation.

Cause: The cell is formatted as Text, which causes Excel to ignore any formulas. This could be directly due to the Text format, or is particularly common when importing data from a CSV or Notepad file. Fix: Change the format of the cell(s) to General or some other format.

on an existing spreadsheet, the sum function is returning a 0 value. Cells that are being added together are formatted as numbers. No matter how the sum function is written, or a if working formula is copied to this cell, the answer is always 0.

A formula always starts with an equal sign (=), which can be followed by numbers, math operators (such as a plus or minus sign), and functions, which can really expand the power of a formula.

The most common reason for AutoSum not working in Excel is numbers formatted as text. To fix such text-numbers, select all problematic cells, click the warning sign, and then click Convert to Number.

AutoSum is a Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet program function that adds together a range of cells and displays the total in the cell below the selected range. For example, if you wanted to add the values of cells between A1 and A5, highlight cells A1 through A5 and click the AutoSum button (shown right).

This happens when your values are in text format and sum can not be performed and only Count can be performed. To test this, put few numbers in few cells and select them. The SUM should appear.

Right-click the Status bar and select an option to enable the feature. Options that appear with a check mark are already active. If you right click on that tool bar (lower right) you should see a list of options you can activate including SUM.