Complete Noob Excel Problem????

U

uncleTom

Alright guys this one should be easy enough.

How do you fill a column with data? I've got large files and I'm tired of dragging data from one cell all the way down the worksheet. My old boss had a trick for this. He simple double-clicked and the column would fill itself, automatically align itself with the other columns. I hate excel, there are so many different menus. I feel bad him calling him up at night and asking such a dumb question.

Anybody use this regularly? I've been to a couple websites but don't know where to look obviously.

Thanks.
 
Uncle Tom

The ExcelTip idea you found DOES work, but (typical with Excel), it is not as simple as it seems.

If you click on the screenshot they give you and study their example, you will see that they have a column of numbers in column A and a formula in cell B1. By clicking on cell B1 in the way they describe, it will copy the formula in B1 down as far as the last row used in column A.

In other words, it only works on adjacent columns.

This may or may not be useful for you. But this is probably what your boss was up to.

Rob
 
I'm not sure exactly what you arde trying to do, but there is a "fill down" facility that will copy the contents on one (source) cell to all those (selected) below it. Select the cell and the ones below it that need filled and select fill odwn from the edit (I think) menu. This also works for "Fill right".

If the source cell contains a formula then the parameters will be incremented to refer to appropriate values.

I think you may also be able to use a right click menu as aklternative to the edit menu.
 
lol excel is great.

say cells A1 to A10 are filled. formula in B1 is "=A1" and you want to copy this down to B10. do the following:

1) select B1
2) ctrl-c to copy
3) shift + left arrow (cells A1 and B1 are selected)
5) don't release shift, press "end" key and then press the down arrow (cells A1 to B10 are selected)
6) don't release shift, press right arrow (cells B1 to B10 are selected)
7) let go of shift
8) press return
9) finished
 
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