Get content of a cell given the row and column numbers

excel excel-formula
Philipp picture Philipp · Jan 27, 2011 · Viewed 555.6k times · Source

I want to get the content of a cell given its row and column number. The row and column number are stored in cells (here B1,B2). I know the following solutions work, but they feel a bit hacky.

Sol 1

=CELL("contents",INDIRECT(ADDRESS(B1,B2)))

Sol 2

=CELL("contents",OFFSET($A$1, B1-1,B2-1))

Is there no less verbose method? (like =CellValue(row,col) or whatever)?

Edit / Clarification: I just want to use the excel worksheet formulas. No VBA. In short, I pretty much look for the equivalent of the VBA Cells() method as an excel Formula.

Answer

Charles Williams picture Charles Williams · Jan 27, 2011

You don't need the CELL() part of your formulas:

=INDIRECT(ADDRESS(B1,B2))

or 

=OFFSET($A$1, B1-1,B2-1)

will both work. Note that both INDIRECT and OFFSET are volatile functions. Volatile functions can slow down calculation because they are calculated at every single recalculation.

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