Easy Excel question

[Jeff7]

I've got some values in cells that I do not want to change when I copy and paste the cell information elsewhere. I know there's some symbol I put in front of these values, but I haven't got a clue what it is. Can't even remember what the term is for them.



And what gives with Excel's accuracy? I've manually done a few formulas, which are to do the arcsin of a value times the sin of another, then converted to degrees. It's giving me these really tiny decimal values instead of zero. My TI-89 and 86 know better than that.

 

[phatrabt]

Do you mean you don't want the values of the cells to change or the cell referrer values (such as those in a formula) or the location values (ie A2, C3, etc)? I don't have an idea about your second question.

 

[mayest]

If you put an apostrophe in front of the equals sign, that will convert it to text. You can copy and paste that without updating cell references. Another way is to click the cell, and then copy the formula from the formula bar. You can then go to the other cell, click in the formula bar and then do a paste. The cell references will be identical.

Excel (up to 2003) maintains 15 significant digits of precision. It is possible that your problems are due to binary to decimal conversion. Not all decimal numbers can be exactly represented in binary and this may cause symptoms like you describe. I don't know if that's the issue here, but it is something you might want to look at.

 

[WildHorse]

mayest, the "apostrophe in front of the equals sign, that will convert it to text" is new to me, thank you for that!

The way I've always done it is to select / copy, then paste special / values. You can do that in place real quick without having to move the cell to a new paste location.

Jeff7, the thing about the $ is to make a cell refernce absolute instead of relative. You put $ in front of the cell's number and letter.

There are variations on that, such as to put the $ in front of only the number OR the letter to make the reference to an absolute position in a row or col instead of to one exact cell.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: scott
mayest, the "apostrophe in front of the equals sign, that will convert it to text" is new to me, thank you for that!

The way I've always done it is to select / copy, then paste special / values. You can do that in place real quick without having to move the cell to a new paste location.

Jeff7, the thing about the $ is to make a cell refernce absolute instead of relative. You put $ in front of the cell's number and letter.

There are variations on that, such as to put the $ in front of only the number OR the letter to make the reference to an absolute position in a row or col instead of to one exact cell.

That's what I was after. "Absolute references." Knew it was really damn easy.


I've got an equation that I need to copy to multiple cells. Some of the references need to change to keep inline with the row that the equation is pasted to, others need to remain absolute, referring to a constant input value.
=($B$10*SIN((90-A16)*(PI()/180)))/SIN((90-B16)*(PI()/180))
That's one of the lines from the spreadsheet. The $B$10 is a constant, but user-adjustable input radius, while A16 and B16 refer to changing angles.


I didn't remember the name to use for these references, so I couldn't really even use The Google to search effectively for it. 😱

Thank you very much. 🙂