I'm going to show you a quick shortcut
for creating absolute references and you
can use this when you're typing or
editing a formula so first of all what
is an absolute reference an absolute
reference is a cell reference that stays
locked on a specific cell or cell range
even if the formula is copied for
example if we create a formula that uses
the tax rate in cell d2 we'll want to
make it an absolute reference to ensure
that any copies of this formula are
still looking at the same tax rate
generally the way to do this is to type
dollar signs before the column letter
and row number but there's a faster way
just press the f4 key at the top of your
keyboard this will automatically add
both dollar signs with a single
keystroke you can also press F for more
than once which will cycle through
different types of cell references and
this is useful if you only want to lock
the row or the column but most of the
time you'll probably want to just press
it once to lock both the row and the
column now on some keyboards you may
have to hold down the function key and
then press f4 and this because the f4
key sometimes controls your computer's
volume or screen brightness by default
so now that our formula is done we can
double click the fill handle to copy
this formula to the empty cells and if
you look in the formula bar you can see
that the d2 reference stays the same in
all of the copied formulas which is
exactly what we want
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