ROW() to create a counterPro Tip: use the ROW formula when you need a counter, access to the current row, or the row of a reference cell.
The ROW function can be quite handy when you are in need of information about the current cell or a reference cell. It gives you the row of a cell as a number. If you are working with INDEX formulas much, ROW becomes an essential tool to get references to cells to feed back into INDEX. You can use the same sort of tricks to obtain the ROW of a reference cell. That row can then be used to INDEX into another reference. This becomes particularly useful when you are working with some sort of offset to a given cell since those offsets are much harder to deal with with normal references.
Another fun use of ROW is when you simply need a counter. It’s easy enough to create a helper column with a simple =CELL_ABOVE+1 but if you want to spare a column, you can also just use ROW. If you need the counter to start at some spot, you can do ROW()-ROW(REF_CELL).
If you are thinking, why would I need a counter, check out the article about using MOD. You may also find that a counter is a good starting point for grouping blocks of cells. See also the moving average article for an example of using ROW.