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Mesa has a unique and useful feature called Formula Inheritance. Formula Inheritance applies object oriented concepts to spreadsheets by allowing a set of cells to inherit their formula from a master cell and automatically change the way they calculate when that master cell changes its formula. Select cells C2 through H13 by clicking in cell C2 and dragging to cell H13 and releasing the mouse button. The range C2 through H13 should be selected and the current cell should be cell C2. Type =INT(RAND * 100) and press Shift-enter. This will SmartFill the range with this formula that generates a random number between 0 and 99. When a range is SmartFilled with a formula, Mesa sets the other cells in the range to inherit their formula for the formula in the base cell which is cell C2 in this case. Select cell C2 and change the formula to =B2 & " Hello" and press enter. Note that all the cells in the range changed the way that they calculated. Change cell C2 to =INT(RAND * 1000). All the cells in the range C2 through H13 should be displaying a random number between 0 and 999. You have just performed a SmartFill operation with formulas and taken advantage of Mesa's formula inheritance feature. Formula inheritance makes it easier to build spreadsheets because you only need to change a single formula and the other cells that inherit their formula from the base formula will automatically change the way that they calculate. Formula Inheritance also makes spreadsheet maintenance easier because you do not have to remember all the places that the formula was copied to. |
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