Use A Title In Formulas


Did you know that when you have a title at the top of a column of data that you can use that title in formulas—instead of the cell reference.

For example:

Let’s suppose that you have two columns labeled “Original Price” and “Discount”. Now let’s say you want to create a third column that calculates the sale price of the items (Original Price – Discount).

Your formula for the third column might look something like this:

=A2 – B2

Not bad—but certainly not very meaningful, unless you take the time to figure out what’s in columns A and B.

Wouldn’t this be a bit better?

=Original Price – Discount

Yeah—I thought it was easier to understand too.

The good news is that you don’t have to do anything special. Once you’ve put the column titles in, Excel can figure out that the data in the column goes with the title.

Cool!

However, this only seems to work on the same worksheet. In other words, you can’t use the formula on a different worksheet from where the Original Price and Discount data is located.

But…

What if there was a quick and easy way to do the same thing on other worksheets in the workbook?

Would it be worth a couple of seconds to “Name” the data so you could use meaningful formulas anywhere in the workbook?

Think about it—less tracking of cell references to figure out what each cell is representing. It could make life easier…