Welcome to the seventh post of this series – Select Precedents and Dependents. Hope you are enjoying this series. Click here to read to navigate to go to special.
What are Precedents and Dependents?
As we all know that a result of a formula or a function is derived using a single or a set of variables and / or constants. In short, result of a formula is an outcome of one or more constants or variables. Precedents are the inputs used to get the result. Dependent is the result itself. What does it mean? The active cell must be a formula. Yeah, I know, that’s obvious. But I wanted to mention..Just in case…
Say for example, A = 1, B = 2 and C = A+B = 1+2 = 3.
In this example, A and B are the Precedents. The value of C is dependent on A and B. Hence C is dependent.
Isn’t it quite possible that A and B are also dependent on some other variables and or constants? Yes, you got that right! It is quite possible. That is why Excel gave us an option of selecting Precedents and Dependents that are Direct only and All Levels.
First things first
When you have to find the precedents / dependents you need to first select the cell to which you need to select precedents or dependents.
Example
