


Go to File > Options > Formulas > Calculation options section in Excel 2016, Excel 2013 and Excel 2010. To activate and use circular references, you must first activate them by checking Enable iterative calculations option under the File menu.
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To learn more about circular references please see: How to Handle Circular References in Excel Another thing to note is that when iterative calculations are disabled, Excel will show a warning as circular references are usually considered user errors unless you know what you’re doing. Even though a higher iteration count usually means more accurate results, this also means longer calculations times – and sometimes crashes. First of all, the number of iterations should be limited. The formula can use the result of the previous calculations, thus automatically calculating the same thing over multiple iterations.Īs easy as it sounds, there are a few things you need to consider. You can create a formula that refers to the cell containing the formula. This can work if your model is relatively simple, but doing so in more complicated workbooks might prove much more challenging, if not downright impossible to do.Īn alternative and better approach is to use the Excel iterative calculation feature. For this, you would need to copy the formula and references as many times as you want to repeat the process. In Excel, you can reference a cell that contains a formula and use its result in an identical formula in a different cell. This is made possible by computers that can run calculations repeatedly to find the likelihood of possible answers by getting closer to the results from different angles. Iterative calculations can help find the solution to mathematical problems by running calculations over and over using previous results.
