How do I sort a table in Excel if it has cell references in it?

Question

I have a table of data in excel in sheet 1 which references various different cells in many other sheets. When I try to sort or filter the sheet, the references change when

Answer 1

I used "save as" to copy the sheet to a new file as msdos text format. Doing this removes the formulas, replacing the cell contents with just the computed values. Then open the new file as tab delimited and sort after defining the columns. I needed to sort computed values by an associated text string (destination) for mileage log so that I could sum up the mileage for each destination.

date beginning ending distance destination

where in row 2 and successive rows beginning was the previous row ending and distance was ending minus beginning.

Answer 2

I've had trouble with this myself and found THE BEST and easiest solution...

1. Copy the data which you wish to make into a table and then sort.
2. Paste is somewhere else on your spreadsheet
3. Values will change due to your cell references, but we don't want that so click the pop-up to do a 'paste special' and choose paste 'values' only.
4. Turn your new data into a table and sort your life away!!!

Hope you find it works. Regards.

Answer 3

Another solution is to: (1) copy the whole table - paste as a link in the same spreadsheet, from now on work only on the 'linked table' (2) copy the column with values to be sorted and paste values only just next to the table you want to sort (3) select the table and replace all = with e.g. #, this will change reference in a static text (4) sort the table by the pasted values (5) replace back all # with =, the references are back Done! It goes pretty fast when using excel shortcuts

Answer 4

Append the sheet name to the formula which makes the reference absolute. For example, if the cell reference is =T7 make it =Sheet1!T7. Paste-link would have done the same thing except only when pasting to another sheet. Paste-link does not work as expected if you are pasting in to the same sheet.

Answer 5

create two tabs, one with the formulas and then a second where you paste link the entire table. the second tab should have no problems when sorting!

Answer 6

A very simple way is to keep the problem columns out of the filtered data, but add a column into the filtered section with cell references to them (simply "='cell'").

That way the problem formulas will remain untouched but the filtered data will reference them correctly so you can use those cells to sort accordingly