freezing cell contents before sorting

jagmarz · Newbie Joined: 17 Jul 2004 Posts: 2

I want to use a formula to quickly populate a bunch of cells with related data (ie, serial numbers or such), but then convert those numbers to hard data so they never change again. Is there a simple way to do this?

One of the motivations for this is that I frequently sort the whole sheet by various columns and sorting seems to break relative cell references. I can turn off auto recalculation, but then I still have the danger if I recalculate that the cells will get incorrect data.

Saving to CSV, of course, locks all the data in, which is what I'm doing now. But there really has to be a better way, right?

-- Mario

Warrick Nelson · Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 12:32 pm Post subject:

I do this often - for similar purposes.

Select the cells, copy and paste special as numbers only.

Sorting does not break relative references. If all relative references are relative only to the same row, then sorting in columns will not show any changes. However, references to outside the sorted range, or to cells in a different row will be affected by sorting. The safest is to convert to numbers.

TerryE · Super User Joined: 16 Jul 2006 Posts: 550 Location: UK

A quick way of doing Paste Special is with the CTL-SHIFT-V shortcut.
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jagmarz · Newbie Joined: 17 Jul 2004 Posts: 2

This is perfect! Thanks!