Information Communication Technology ICT – 20 Spreadsheets | e-Consult

Using relative cell referencing is more appropriate when you want to perform calculations that depend on the relative position of cells. A specific scenario is calculating the area of a rectangular grid. Suppose the width of each rectangle is in column C and the height is in column D. You want to calculate the area of each rectangle in column E.

In cell E2, you could enter the formula '=C2*D2'. If you then copy this formula down to E3, E4, etc., the cell references will automatically adjust to C3, D3, C4, D4, and so on, calculating the area for each rectangle in the grid. This is beneficial because it avoids having to manually update the cell references each time you add or move a rectangle in the grid. The relative referencing ensures that the formula always calculates the area of the rectangle corresponding to the current row.