Keyboard Shortcut To Identify Cells Referenced By A Formula

This is a ‘quick and dirty’ tip for troubleshooting the cell references in your formulas.

Excel offers options to trace (precedent) cells referenced by formulas or trace the (dependent) cells that contain formulas that refer to the active cell. In Excel 2003, click View, Toolbars, Formula Auditing. In Excel 2007, click the Formulas tab and you’ll see the Trace Precedents and Trace Dependents commands in the Formula Auditing group. Clicking on these commands will draw arrows pointing to the cells referenced by the formula in the Active Cell.

However, if you simply want a quick way to find out which cells a formula refers to, pressing CTRL + [ (opening bracket) will select the cells that the formula in the active cell directly refers to.

There is also a similar trick you can use to trace dependant cells (cells that depend on a cell's value) . Pressing CTRL + ] (closing bracket) will select the cells (rather than draw arrows) that directly depend on the original cell.

In both cases, subsequent pressing of the keyboard shortcut will trace to the next level.

Once the referenced cells are selected, you may want to view the contents of each of these cells. Pressing the Tab key on your keyboard to tab through each cell.