Ok, I have a spreadsheet with multiple columns, for example:

Date |       spanning header1     |        spanner header2     |
spanning header3      | Average   header      |
       |  subhead1a | subhead1b |  subhead2a | subhead2b |  subhead3a |
subhead3b |                                |
date  |  s1adata     |  s1bdata     |  s2adata     |  s2bdata     |
s3adata     |  s3bdata     | average s1a,s2a,s3a |

Now for every row, I need to calculate the subtotal data.

No problem with the formula (like in =AVERAGE(B3,D3,F3)). The next line's
formula would be =AVERAGE(B4,D4,F4).

The problem is that I don't want to have to enter the "hard-coded" reference
to each column unique to each line (since I potentially have a hundred rows
of data) I would like just duplicate the formula in each line and let Excel
figure out the relative columns.

I THINK variable names might be the solution, but is there a better way
and/or a built-in way to handle this seemingly simple problem?

Thanks,

Marc