#How to flash fill on mac excel how to#
#How to flash fill on mac excel plus#
#How to flash fill on mac excel series#

The Fill command is also useful if you’re filling a large number of cells, as you’ll see in a bit.

#How to flash fill on mac excel series#

If you’re having trouble using the fill handle, or you just prefer using commands on the ribbon, you can use the Fill command on the Home tab to fill a series into adjacent cells. You still have to select “Fill Series” from a popup menu, but that menu automatically displays when you stop dragging and release the right mouse button, so this can be a handy shortcut.įill a Linear Series into Adjacent Cells Using the Fill Command You can also click and drag the fill handle with the right mouse button instead of the left. Then, select those two cells and drag the fill handle until you’ve selected all the cells you want to fill.īecause you’ve given it two pieces of data, it will know the step value you want to use, and fill the remaining cells accordingly. Instead of entering just one number, enter the first two numbers in the first two cells. You can, however, do this without having to select Fill Series from the Auto Fill Options menu. The other four 1s are replaced with 2–5 and our linear series is filled. To fill the linear series, we select “Fill Series” from the popup menu. That’s why we ended up with five 1s and not the linear series of 1–5. The first option, Copy Cells, is the default. To replace the copies with the linear series, click the “Auto Fill Options” button that displays when you’re done dragging the fill handle. Be warned that copying data from an adjacent cell replaces any data that is currently in the selected cell.

NOTE: To quickly copy the contents of a cell above the currently selected cell, press Ctrl+D, or to copy the contents of a cell to the left of a selected cell, press Ctrl+R. Why didn’t it fill the linear series (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in our example)? By default, when you enter one number and then use the fill handle, that number is copied to the adjacent cells, not incremented. When you release the mouse button, you’ll notice that the value has been copied into the cells over which you dragged the fill handle.

#How to flash fill on mac excel plus#

With the black plus sign over the fill handle, click and drag the handle down the column (or right across the row) until you reach the number of cells you want to fill. When you move your mouse over the fill handle, it turns into a black plus sign, as shown below. Notice the green square in the lower-right corner of the selected cell? That’s the fill handle. To do this, type a 1 in the first cell in the column and then select that cell. We’ll save ourselves some time (and boredom) by using the fill handle to populate the column with the linear series of numbers. Very tedious and time consuming, especially for large amounts of data. You can type the first number, press Enter to get to the next row in that column, and enter the next number, and so on. Let’s say we want to create a column of sequential numbers, increasing by one in each cell.

In each linear series, you add (or subtract) the same step value. However, a linear series can also be a series of decimal numbers (1.5, 2.5, 3.5…), decreasing numbers by two (100, 98, 96…), or even negative numbers (-1, -2, -3). The simplest example of a linear series is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. A linear series consists of numbers where the next number is obtained by adding a “step value” to the number before it. One way to use the fill handle is to enter a series of linear data into a row or column of adjacent cells.

#How to flash fill on mac excel how to#

We’ll show you how to fill various types of series of data using the AutoFill features. Instead of manually entering numbers, times, or even days of the week over and over again, you can use the AutoFill features (the fill handle or the Fill command on the ribbon) to fill cells if your data follows a pattern or is based on data in other cells. This can save you a lot of time when entering sequential data in large worksheets and make you more productive. The Fill Handle in Excel allows you to automatically fill in a list of data (numbers or text) in a row or column simply by dragging the handle.