Excel Look up. Absolute or obsolote $$?

Question

What does this mean. I have been watching tutorials about LOOKUP and it puts $$ between some letters. How can I determine which letters to put them in. I know that it stop them from being copied or something and when i don`t use them the final result is not what it should be

Answer 1

Anytime you use the $ it makes the reference to the cell an absolute reference. $A$1

Cells are relative by default. A1

When you copy or fill cells the references will automatically change to the correct references because they are relative. This is what you normally want.

However, if you always want to reference a specific cell, make it absolute. With the VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP functions many times you want to always look up the data from the exact same place, hence the absolute reference.