How can I reference text in another cell using Excel?

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Excel is a spreadsheet software that allows users to store and manipulate data in a tabular format. One useful feature of Excel is the ability to reference text in one cell from another cell. This allows users to easily access and use information from different cells within the same worksheet or even across different worksheets. To reference text in another cell, users can use the “=cell reference” formula, where “cell reference” is the specific cell location containing the desired text. This enables efficient data management and organization in Excel, making it a powerful tool for data analysis and reporting.

Excel: Reference Text in Another Cell

There are two common ways to reference text in another cell in Excel:

Method 1: Reference Text in Another Cell in Same Sheet

=A7

This particular formula will return whatever text is located in cell A7 of the current sheet.

Method 2: Reference Text in Another Cell in Different Sheet

=Sheet2!B7

This particular formula will return whatever text is located in cell B7 in the sheet named Sheet2.

The following examples show how to use each method in practice.

Example 1: Reference Text in Another Cell in Same Sheet

Suppose we have the following dataset in Excel that contains information about various basketball players:

Suppose we would like to return the text located in cell A7 in a different cell.

To do so, we could type the following formula into cell E1:

=A7

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

Excel reference text in another cell

Notice that cell E1 now contains Nets, which is the text located in cell A7.

Example 2: Reference Text in Another Cell in Different Sheet

Suppose we have another sheet in our Excel workbook called Sheet2 that contains the following data:

Excel reference text in another cell in a different sheet

Suppose we would like to type a formula into cell E1 of Sheet1 to return the value in cell B7 of Sheet2.

We can use the following formula to do so:

=Sheet2!B7

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

Notice that cell E1 now contains Eastern, which is the text located in cell B7 of Sheet2.

Note: In order to reference a cell in another sheet, you must use an exclamation point ( ! ) after the sheet name in the formula.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Excel:

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