Where is formula auditing in excel. Trace precedents excel formula auditing. Excel formula auditing trace precedents the formula function in excel is one of the most useful things any business owner or employee can use especially when large volumes of data need to be evaluated. In excel 2003 you can view the toolbar by right clicking the toolbar and selecting formula auditing.
Use one of the tools in the formula auditing group. To make excel show you the formula behind every cell in your spreadsheet youll need to engage formula auditing mode. On the formulas tab in the formula auditing group click show formulas.
Now i select f5 cell which is showing as 71. Which formulas are referring to the active cell. Then you can see an arrow as shown below.
Also check out these 7 little known shortcuts. By default excel shows the results of formulas. To trace precedents we can use the trace precedents command in the formula auditing group under the formulas tab.
These findings are shown graphically by arrow lines that makes the visualization easy. To use the auditing tools in excel click on the formula you wish to audit. You can display all the formulas in the active worksheet with a.
Instead of clicking show formulas press ctrl you can find this key above the tab key. In excel 2007 it appears in the formula ribbon tab. Excel formula auditing commands provide you an easy way to find.
If you need to analyse formula and track the links to and from a cell use the excel formula auditing toolbar. It will help you to show the arrows that indicate which cells affect the value of the currently selected cell. To show the formulas instead of their results execute the following steps.
I used excel 2010 for this tutorial. Then i go to formula tab and then in the auditing section i click on trace precedents shortcut key alt mp. Click on the formulas tab in the office ribbon.
The keyboard shortcut for this is simple. We can see that precedent cells are highlighted with blue dots.