Speed Data Entry

Excel can often predict what data you want to enter into a worksheet. By spotting trends in your data, Excel uses educated guesses to fill in cell data for you. Excel uses data fills to copy and extend data from one cell to several additional cells .

To Do: Use Data Fills

One of the most common data fills you perform is to use Excel's capability to copy one cell's data to several other cells. You might want to create a pro forma balance sheet for the previous five-year period, for example. You can insert a two-line label across the top of each year's data. The first line would contain five occurrences of the label Year, and the second line would hold the numbers 2003 through 2007. To use the data-fill feature in Excel to create the five similar labels, perform these simple steps:

1. Click the B3 cell to move the cell pointer there.

2. Type Year . Don't press Enter or any cell-moving keys after you type the label.

3. Locate the cell's fill handle in the lower-right corner.

4. Drag the fill handle to the right across the next four columns . As you drag the fill handle, Excel displays the pop-up label Year indicating the value that will be automatically entered in the new cells.

5. Release the mouse button. Excel fills all five cells with the label.

If you drag the fill handle down, Excel copies the label down the column. Although the Edit, Fill command performs the same function as the fill handle, dragging the fill handle is much easier than selecting from the menu. Ctrl+D performs the same operation as Edit, Fill, Down.