title: MS Excel: How do I make cell references variable?
body: <p>I probably didn't word that title correctly, so let me explain what I'm trying to do.</p>
  
  <p>I need to find cycles in a series of data.  So let’s say I have all of my data in column A of an Excel spreadsheet.  If a condition that I’m looking for is true in, say, cell A7, I want to check to check if it’s true in every second cell (A9, A11, A13 and so forth).  If it’s not true in every second cell, I want to adjust the model to check every third cell starting with that A7 cell (A10, A13, A16, and so on).  If the condition is not true in every third cell, then I want to check every fourth cell (A11, A15, A19, etc.).</p>
  
  <p>Programming the formula to check if the condition is true should be somewhat easy using either IF or AND formulas.  My problem is how do I change the model to switch from every second cell to every third cell, and then run it to check every fourth cell, and so on.  I’d like to, say, set up the formulas in column B and have cell C1 be a user input that determines which cells are used in the formulas in column B.  Is there a way to do this?</p>
  
  <p>Example: if cell C1 says “2”, then the formulas in column B check every other cell in column A, and if I change the value in cell C1 from “2” to “3”, then the formulas in column B switch from checking every second cell to checking every third cell and report back to me.</p>
  
  <p>I could just manually change the cell references in the formulas in column B, but that could take bloody ages and I figure there’s got to be a better way.</p>
  
  <p>So I’m looking to make the cell references ‘variable’ in a sense.  Instead of hardcoding the cell references and saying “look at cell A7, then look at cell A9, then look at cell A11…” I want to tell Excel “look at A7, then the next cell you look at is dependent upon what I say in cell C1.”</p>