A cell reference is simply a way of identifying a specific cell in your spreadsheet.

Microsoft Excel 2013 surrounds the active cell with a dark border to help identify the cell you are editing. Pressing the Enter key after editing the cell moves the active cell to the next cell down.

By default, the active cell in Excel is noted by a green border. There’s no highlight or shading. Even if you change themes and colors, the active cell remains the same.

Microsoft Excel updates cell references when you copy an expression. Here are a couple of workarounds for those rare occasions when you don't want to change the cell references.

Open a New Worksheet; Launch Excel and create a new worksheet named "June." Type "Sales" in cell A1 and "1000" in cell B1. Do not place parentheses around these values.