Filling cells quickly - Fill Series

Most will know know this, but you would be surprised how many people I have met that dont know how to drag and automatically fill cell values with anything from numbers to days of the week, months, etc..

Example 1: Filling a column with numbers

• Type the first value in the required cell
• Now Right Click on lower right of the cell containing the first value, the cursor icon will change to a narrow cross
• Now Drag Down to the the amount you want to auto fill - Note if you want to fill a large number of cells, such as 31 for a month, then drag to a guess of 31.  More cells can be auto filled or even better take it past 31 and delete what is not required.
• When you have covered all the required cells, Release The Right Click and you will be shown a popup menu
• Now select Fill Series from the displayed menu and the cells will be auto filled

• Note - the other options available, 

Copy Cells - does that, copies the value of the first cell into all cells selected.

Fill Formatting Only - again, as it says, if you want to quickly fill cells with the same formatting as the first, Fill Without Formatting - will fill the selected cells without copying the formatting of the first cell, Day, months etc will increment as Fill Series, but other values including numbers will not increment and just be copied..

Example 2: Filling a row with days of the week

• Type the first value in the required cell, say Monday - Note that Days can even be abbreviated to Mon, Tue, etc.. 
• Again Right Click on lower right of the cell containing the first value, and again, the cursor icon will change to a narrow cross
• Now drag to the right for the the amount of days you want to auto fill - Again if you want to fill a large number of cells, such as 31 for a month, then drag to a guess of 31.  More cells can be auto filled or even better take it past 31 and delete what is not required.  
• If creating several months of days and dates on one sheet, do check the dates and days are correct, the system only fills the series, if you put 31 days in a 30 day month, the rest of the dates and days will be out of sync..

Note: Excel will notice if you are creating an incremental list such as Big Test 1, Big Test 2 ...  Try it..

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