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Change Your Life with Excel Getting Your Fill

elcome to Change Your Life with Excel.

This month’s column was inspired by a couple of

recent Excel courses I presented which left the delegates

gasping in awe (okay, a bit of artistic licence here; there

were a couple of “wows” and a “well I never...”). Suffice to

say, the first tip can be a real time saver when filling a

series of data, especially dates.

The 2nd tip (the Excel “secret”) leads on from this to show

you how to get even more flexibility when filling a data

series.

As always, the features covered here are based on Excel

2003 however most can still be found in other versions.

Time Saving Tip Drag and Fill Options

You may have used the drag and fill feature in Excel to

complete a list of sequential numbers or dates. If not, the

following example shows how you can quickly complete a

series of dates.

Starting with the first date in the required series, say

1st January 2009:

• Select the cell containing this date

• Click and hold the fill handle (as illustrated)

while you drag in the direction you wish to fill

(usually down or to the right)

• Release the mouse button

Click and drag the fill handle at the bottom right of the cell

The cells are now completed with a date series

commencing 1st January 2009 incrementing by 1 day.

The resulting series of dates

Well that’s OK, but what if you only wanted to fill the

series with weekdays? Wouldn’t you now have to go

through and delete all the weekend dates? Not

surprisingly the answer to this is no.

What most of us might miss is the small icon which

lingers at the bottom right of the filled series. Click on this

icon to open up a whole new world of fill options (for

dates at least).

Options revealed when clicking on the fill icon

Now simply select whether, for example, you wish to fill in

weekdays, months or years.

Unfortunately the fill options for numbers are not quite so

extensive but they will allow you to complete a series of

numbers incrementing by 1 each time:

W

By Leigh Drake Director Arc Business Processes www.arcbusiness.com.au

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Finance, Valuation, Risk & Modelling

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• Select the cell containing the start number

• Click and hold the fill handle while you drag in

the direction you wish to fill

• Release the mouse button

• Select the icon

• Choose Fill Series from the menu

Alternatively, you can do this a little quicker simply by

holding the CTRL key as you drag.

Secret

More Drag and Fill Options

As always, those Excel programmers like to keep a few

tricks firmly up their sleeve. There are in fact even more

fill options available – you just have to know how to get at

them.

This time, instead of dragging while holding the left

mouse button, drag with the right mouse button. This

reveals a very similar menu as the previous method

except for one important addition at the bottom – the

Series option.

The additional Series option revealed with the right click

Select this to reveal the Series dialog box.

The Series dialog box

While there isn’t space in this newsletter to cover all the

options available, the examples below show how to

complete the dialog box to fill a series with calendar

quarter dates, weekly dates and numbers incrementing

by 10.

Completing a Stop value prevents the series from

overrunning if you drag too far.

Filling quarter end dates up to 31 Dec 2010

The result which stops at 31 Dec 2010

NOTE

• By dragging either up or to the left the series will

decrement

• To prevent a date from incrementing when

dragging, hold the CTRL key (this can be a bit

confusing since this works in the opposite

manner for numbers)

Starting date

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Finance, Valuation, Risk & Modelling

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Filling weekly dates up to 28 Feb 2009

The result which stops at 27 Feb 2009

Filling a number series incrementing by 10, no stop value

Well I never...!

As you can see from the screenshots there are other

options available which may also save you a bit of time

and effort.

Until next time, happy Excelling.

Starting date