Page 82 - Excel Timesaving Techniques for Dummies

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13 Speeding Up Data
Entry with AutoFill

Technique

nce in a blue moon, a software feature comes along that’s so
Save Time By handy that you wonder how you ever got along without it. Excel’s
OAutoFill feature is that kind of spreadsheet innovation for me.
Filling in commonly used
series Here, for once, is some Microsoft Intelli-sense that actually does make
some sense because it is a real timesaver.
Filling with different
increments With AutoFill, you can fill out a sequential series of entries (such as
months of the year or days of the week) across a row or up or down a
Creating custom fill lists
column simply by entering the first entry in the series and then dragging
the cell pointer by its Fill handle — the tiny black square that appears in
the lower-right corner of the active cell. In addition, you can have Excel
increment the entries in the series by values other than just one (be it
one day, one month, or one number). And as if that isn’t enough, Excel
also enables you to create your own custom fill lists that tell Excel how
to fill in a list whenever you enter one of its unique members and then go
for the Fill handle.

All three of these procedures are covered in this technique on AutoFill,
which is undoubtedly one of my favorite Excel features.

You also use this same AutoFill feature to extend formulas in the
tables in your spreadsheet. When using AutoFill to copy formulas, the
feature naturally adjusts its cell references instead of generating a
sequential series — see Technique 24 for details.

Getting Your Fill of AutoFill

Straight out of the box, AutoFill is about as versatile and easy to use as
any Excel feature can be. Table 13-1 shows the kinds of initial entries you
can make — with examples of the kind of series that they generate —
when you drag the Fill handle across or down new cells. As you can see
from the examples shown in this table, Excel can create a fairly wide
array of sequential date and time series as well as some highly individual
ones (for item and code numbers), all of which don’t require you to cus-
tomize the feature whatsoever.