How do you force the focus of an Excel Cell to remain the same?

Solution 1:

You can put a dollar sign ($) in front of anything you want to remain a static reference if you copy the formula to other cells.

In the reference for cell F4, you can change it to F$4.

However if you insert or delete any rows before F4, Excel will automatically adjust the formula (e.g. inserting a row, F$4 would become F$5). To prevent this you can wrap the cell reference with the INDIRECT function as follows:

=INDIRECT("F4")

The INDIRECT function creates a cell reference from a string it is given, in this case returning a reference to F4. By doing it this way Excel won't adjust the formula if you insert or delete any rows; it will always point to F4 no matter what.