Help with a possible circular reference

I have a general question about excel that is a little complicated to explain so I'm going to try my best. This is something I've been doing for years and have always thought that there has to be a better way. What I am trying to do is manipulate the value of cell a IN CELL A. Of course if I do this I get a circular error. I'm trying to figure out a work around and I can't imagine that I am the only person who thought the correct way of doing this is far too inefficient.

cell a
VALUE

cell b
manipulation of cell a

After manipulating the value of cell a in cell b, I have to copy and paste the value of cell b in cell b to write over the formula
Then I do a cell a = cell b formula
then I copy and paste the new value of cell a in cell a, again to overwrite the formula with the value
then I can safely delete cell b

Is there a better way other than writing a macro?

Duplicate post: http://www.excelforum.com/showthread.php?t=1172593

Welcome to the Forum, unfortunately this is a duplicate post and as such will now be closed, you may continue in your other thread.

Thread Closed.