Excel search for cell references in formulas

Question

I inherited a big model and have been trying to reverse engineer some of the formulas. There are a lot of fields. I am not sure if everyone of them is necessary.

Is it possible to search an Excel document (with 5 worksheets) to find if say, AZ12 is used in any formula? Or $AZ12 or $AZ$12?

score 23 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 22 '16 at 17:09

23

Tools > Formula Auditing > Trace Precedents or Trace Dependents (Excel 2003)

Formulas > Trace Precedents or Trace Dependent (Excel 2010)

edited Jul 22 '16 at 17:09

Jeff Axelrod

27,676
31
147
246

answered Aug 22 '11 at 20:39

CFNinja

3,571
4
38
59

Yep, that's one way to do it on a per cell basis. – Lance Roberts Aug 22 '11 at 20:44
8

Excel 2010: Formulas > Trace Precedents or Trace Dependents – Saurabh May 16 '14 at 19:29

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 22 '11 at 20:19

1

I bought the add-in Formula Manager to do this.
If you want to do it yourself, you'll have to implement it in VBA.

answered Aug 22 '11 at 20:19

Lance Roberts

22,383
32
112
130

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 10 '15 at 20:31

Search > Options > Within: Workbook > Look in: Formulas

The upside is that you can broaden the search for example by omitting the row number, or narrow it by including pieces of a formula you want to find. For an inherited file I would Find All '='.

The downside is you have to check with and without dollar signs, a total of four searches for the original example.

Excel search for cell references in formulas

3 Answers3

Linked