How can you quickly copy data or create an automatic series in Excel?
AutoFill is the answer. Hi, I'm Dawn Bjork, The Software Pro.
I'm also a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Certified Excel Expert.
In this online training, we'll focus on the built-in AutoFill features.
AutoFill is a great way for you to copy or duplicate from a selected range to
contiguous or touching cells.
Let's say that I wanted to see multiple occurrences of this entry. Well,
we simply move to that cell and it can be more than one cell that's selected.
And look for this fill handle.
That's a little square on the bottom right hand corner.
When you hover your mouse, it becomes a black cross. For this,
I'll fill vertically
and now I have multiple copies of that entry,
but AutoFill has a lot of different personalities.
If I wanted a series of a value or a number,
we could try it again.
Now, right now I just have multiple copies of the number one,
but look for this Smart Tag. This is the AutoFill Options,
and by selecting this we can see that we have other choices.
How do I actually want to work with this range?
And for this one, I want to fill a series
and now I see that series automatically created,
but we can even take that further. I'll select this and start again.
Now I have a series that I want to teach Excel and for that I'll highlight both
of those cells and now grab that fill handle and notice how smart Excel is and
figuring out what I want.
Excel also has some built-in series or list and these include the months of the
year as well as the days of the week.
So whether you spell them out or abbreviate them,
then the AutoFill will automatically generate that series for you and this could
be also used horizontally if I was building a budget,
for instance.
Another part of the AutoFill is when we have dates and for this I'll grab that
fill handle once again
and Excel will give me a series of dates. Now that is the default.
Perhaps that's not exactly what I want.
We'll go once again to those AutoFill Options.
Did you actually want to just copy the cells. Because it's a date,
we have a lot of different variations.
Maybe you only want weekdays and now we have that result.
Now this isn't a formula. This is actually data entry.
How can you leverage AutoFill?
Let's look at my favorite AutoFill trick for duplicating or copying content,
especially when it's a formula. This is a great time saver.
We have a formula that is calculating that quarterly data.
Now imagine that you have hundreds or thousands of rows where you want to
duplicate that. Well, even if you're familiar with AutoFill,
it can be kind of tedious to grab that fill handle and drag it manually down.
Instead move to that fill handle and double click.
And the crowd goes wild because how much time can you save just by knowing this
one trick. Very fast and easy.
Now you've seen how to save time and effort by taking advantage of the AutoFill
features in Excel. For more tips and shortcuts on being productive with Excel,
head to TheSoftwarePro.com/Excel.
If this training was helpful,
please like and comment on this video and subscribe to this channel.
This is Dawn Bjork, The Software Pro. Thanks for watching.