[excel] What does an exclamation mark before a cell reference mean?

In a text about Excel I have read the following:

=SUM(!B1:!K1)

when defining a name for a cell and this was entered into the Refers To field.

What does this mean?

This question is related to excel excel-formula

The answer is


If you use that forumla in the name manager you are creating a dynamic range which uses "this sheet" in place of a specific sheet.

As Jerry says, Sheet1!A1 refers to cell A1 on Sheet1. If you create a named range and omit the Sheet1 part you will reference cell A1 on the currently active sheet. (omitting the sheet reference and using it in a cell formula will error).

edit: my bad, I was using $A$1 which will lock it to the A1 cell as above, thanks pnuts :p