What do these characters mean?
 

Hi,

1. Exclamation point
------------------------
It is the delimiter between the sheet name and the cell address on that sheet.
Eg:
if you wanna know the value of cell A1 of the sheet where you are, no need
of specifying the sheet name:
= A1
But the cell is on another sheet , you need to give the sheet name:
=MySheet!A1
Now if the sheet name contains special caracters (eg: a space) then enclose
the sheet name with apostrophe:
='My Sheet'!A1
To extend this idea, you could even ask for the cell located on a closed
workbook. The full syntax is:
='path_to_book\[book_name]Sheet_name'!cell_address

2. Dollar Sign
-------------
Check for online-help about "The difference between relative and absolute
references"
Basically, $ sign in front of the column of in front of the row makes that
column or row absolute, else it is relative.
Absolute reference stay as is when being copied/pasted while relative
references are re-adjusted during a copy/paste.
Eg:
-In A1, enter "Euro"
-In B1, enter "Dollar"
-Enter a few values in A2:A10
-In B2, enter the formula: =A2 * $D$1
-In D1 , enter the conversion rate: 1.25
Now you'd like to have the same formula in the whole column B. Meaning in
B3, to have
=A3 * $D$1
--- compared to the formula in B2, you just want the A2 to be changed
into A3, but you still want the link to D1
- Copy B2 (menu Edit Copy)
- Paste in B3 (menu Edit Paste)
Look at the formula in B3... only the relative (with-no-dollar-sign)
reference has been adjusted.This is the difference between relative and
absolute.
- now paste in B2:B10 and look at the resulting formulae.

Now, in the same idea, you could have a mix of relative and absolute: the
column relative and the row absolute -- A$3

I hope it is a bit clearer.

Regards,
Sebastien

"simsjr" wrote:

Ok, I get the following cell formula when I paste a link to a cell in another
tab. It looks like this:

='Example Tab'!$L$8

What I'd like to know is what the exclamation point and dollar signs mean.
Why can't Excel just do something like this instead?

='Example Tab'L8

Can anyone help?