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Excel - Mastering Excel: Building Formulas with Text Using the INDIRECT Function - Episode 727

516 views · Published 13 February 2009 · 2:38 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: MrExcel.com · 2009 · Education

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Microsoft Excel Tutorial:  Mastering Excel: Building Formulas with Text Using the INDIRECT Function.

Welcome back to the MrExcel netcast! In today's video, we'll be discussing how to build formulas with text in Excel. This is a question that was sent in by one of our viewers, Bill, who was wondering how to get Excel to evaluate a formula that is represented by text.

Bill had some codes in his spreadsheet and he wanted to use those codes to build formulas. He used the ampersand symbol to combine the codes with the cell references, creating a formula that looked like a SUM function. However, he soon realized that he couldn't use the SUM function directly in this case.

So, I suggested using the INDIRECT function to solve this problem. The INDIRECT function allows you to refer to a cell using a text string, which is exactly what Bill needed. By using the INDIRECT function, we were able to dynamically build a formula based on the codes and cell references, resulting in the desired outcome.

In this video, I'll walk you through the steps of using the INDIRECT function and show you how it can be a useful tool for building formulas with text in Excel. So, if you've ever encountered a similar situation where you needed to evaluate a formula represented by text, this video is for you!

I hope you found this video helpful and informative. Don't forget to like and subscribe to our channel for more Excel tips and tricks. And if you have any questions or suggestions for future videos, please leave them in the comments below. Thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next netcast from MrExcel!

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Bill has a worksheet where he's building text references and then hopes to evaluate the resulting SUM function. Instead, I suggest using INDIRECT to add up the three individual cells. Episode 727 shows you how.

Table of Contents:
(00:00) Introduction 
(00:15) Question from Bill 
(00:26) Explanation of Bill's approach 
(00:40) Using the INDIRECT function 
(01:03) Editing the formula 
(01:41) Automatic updates with INDIRECT 
(01:51) Benefits of INDIRECT 
(02:09) Clicking Like really helps the algorithm

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