Excel, a basic tool for all computers and its obtaining is easy, since you only have to enter the official Office website and follow the instructions. It contains a large number of formulas or functions that are really useful for everyone, from students to professionals. These are a composite of mathematical formulas which are confusing, so many people wonder how functions are used in Excel.
These have a wide variety of applications . One of these functions is INDIRECT, which is classified within the formulas of “SEARCH AND REFERENCE”; As its name says, the INDIRECT function works indirectly by extracting the value contained in a certain cell to which it refers.
The INDIRECT function is simple to apply , it can also be used alone or in combination with others since it represents a great help when building large functions or even a little more complicated, because it can be used to always refer to the same cell that will not be modified even if new data is entered
Other available functions can work based on time intervals to extract information from a table. For the most part, these work in days, months and years. One of these is the ROWS and END.MONTH function.
Formula syntax
To apply it, you must first understand how it works. it is composed of two arguments, the first which is mandatory and is “REF” which refers to the reference itself to the cell that contains the value to be extracted. The second which is optional is “A1” which refers to the format in which the reference will be created.
The second argument can be true or omitted or false. In a few words, if you choose true or omitted, you would work with the format A1, A2, A3 which will refer to the cells and columns as they are seen in the worksheet: columns represented by letters and rows represented by numbers, in If you choose false, you would be working with the format F1C1, F1C2, F1C3 which refers to row 1 column 1 and so on.
Function application
First, it must be placed in the cell where you want to extract the value to which it will refer, once there the INDIRECT function will be called, this can be done both using the equal sign and writing INDIRECT as well as doing a quick search from the bar of formulas or also going to the toolbar to locate in the formulas tab and finally to the option of “search and reference”.
Secondly, we proceed to fill in the first argument , “REF”, there the cell to which we want to make the reference is indicated to extract its content and deposit it in the cell in which we make the call, the desired cell, in case of wanting to block it so that it always refers to the same cell, the use of quotation marks (“”) would be used.
Third would be the second argument “A1” which will be found between brackets ([]) in this case we finally proceed to choose the format , as already mentioned, this step can be omitted.
How to create a reference to a cell with the Excel INDIRECT function?
In a hypothetical case, there is a worksheet, in this sheet there is a small table that goes from cell A1 to A3. It is known that A1 has a numerical quantity, “25” and we want to extract that information to cell C1 , but as this function works INDIRECTly, it is necessary to refer to cell A1 since that cell contains the value to be extracted.
That is why we proceed to use cell B2 to make the reference , therefore in said cell we enter the value A1 which is the reference to the cell that contains the desired value, then it would be a matter of locating in cell C1 and continuing In the steps specified above, once the function has been applied, the desired value will have been correctly extracted, in this case the numerical amount of “25”.
This refers to the ES group functions, which specify whether a group of values meets certain requirements . Users can learn how to use ISERROR and ISERR functions for free.
