Calc Guide

Figure 131: Relative references
You can think of a relative address as a pair of offsets to the current
cell. Cell B1 is 1 column to the left of Cell C5 and 4 rows above. The
address could be written as R[-1]C[-4]. In fact earlier spreadsheets
allowed this notation method to be used in formulas.
Whenever you copy this formula from cell B5 to another cell the result
will always be the sum of the two numbers taken from the two cells
one and two rows above the cell containing the formula.
Relative addressing is the default method of referring to addresses in
Calc.
Absolute referencing
You may want to multiply a column of numbers by a fixed amount. A
column of figures might show amounts in US Dollars. To convert these
amounts to Euros it is necessary to multiply each dollar amount by the
exchange rate. $US10.00 would be multiplied by 0.75 to convert to
Euros, in this case Eur7.50. The following example shows how to input
an exchange rate and use that rate to convert amounts in a column
form USD to Euros.
1) Input the exchange rate Eur:USD (0.75) in cell D1. Enter amounts
(in USD) into cells D2, D3 and D4, for example 10, 20, and 30.
2) In cell E2 type the formula =D2*D1. The result is 7.5, correctly
shown.
3) Copy the formula in cell E2 to cell E3. The result is 200, clearly
wrong! Calc has copied the formula using relative addressing -
the formula in E3 is =D3*D2 and not what we want which is
=D3*D1.
4) In cell E2 edit the formula to be =D2*$D$1. Copy it to cells E3
and E4. The results are now 15 and 22.5 which are correct.
190 OpenOffice.org 3.x Calc Guide