Tips for working efficiently with Excel's fill handle

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Dina Maxwell
5 years ago
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Tips for working efficiently with Excel's fill handle The fill handle is a remarkably useful Excel tool. Here are some techniques that should be useful to the average Excel user.

If you hold the mouse over the bottom right corner of the cell or cells selected, the cursor will change to a simple black cross. This handle provides several methods of copying and extending values.

1 Tips for working efficiently with Excel's fill handle The fill handle is a remarkably useful Excel tool. Here are some techniques that should be useful to the average Excel user. Excel s fill handle is the small black square in the bottom-right corner of the selected cell or range. If you hold the mouse over the bottom right corner of the cell or cells selected, the cursor will change to a simple black cross. This handle provides several methods of copying and extending values. It s flexible and can almost instantly fill thousands of rows you just need to know when to drag, when to click, and when to hold down an alternate key to fulfill its potential. Copy values Select the value you want to copy. Then, grab the fill handle by clicking it and holding down the left mouse key. Drag it in the appropriate direction, as shown in and Excel copies the value to the selected cells.

Quickly Filling a Column with formulas. When creating a many-row worksheet, it is often necessary to type a formula in one of the top rows and fill the column with that same formula.

2 Quickly Filling a Column with formulas. When creating a many-row worksheet, it is often necessary to type a formula in one of the top rows and fill the column with that same formula. For example you can see from the formula function bar in the image below that the formula in cell A1 is the sum or total of cells C1 and D1 [ i.e. 2+2=4] Now we would like to fill the column below cell A1 with the same formula but have Excel refer our formula to columns C and D so that our new formulas refer to whatever numbers are in those columns. However we don't want the fill to go on to infinity so here's what we do to put a limit on the number of cells that are filled. A convenient way to find the bottom of the column is to go there once (when you are first working with the worksheet) and place a character in each cell of the last row so that Excel will know the last cell that we want to fill. It knows this because Excel will stop filling the column in the blank cell following the one that contains data. In the image below we have set row 10 as the end of our formula fill but you can set it at any number of cells that you need. In the example we have used the word "end" but any character will do the job.

Now, when you place your formula at the top of the column, you can simply do the following. 1. Select the cell that has your formula in it. (A1 in the above image.) 2.

At this stage when you look at your work you will see column of zeroes [or nothing at all] below your top cell as per the image below. You haven't done anything wrong.

3 Now, when you place your formula at the top of the column, you can simply do the following. 1. Select the cell that has your formula in it. (A1 in the above image.) 2. Press Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow. This selects all the cells from the formula through the "bottom marker" in the column. 3. Press Ctrl+D. The selected cells are filled with the formula. At this stage when you look at your work you will see column of zeroes [or nothing at all] below your top cell as per the image below. You haven't done anything wrong. It's because there are no values in columns C and D and your formula in column A refers to the sum of whatever is in column C and D. By the way you will also see that Excel has also replaced the character in row 10 with your formula.

4 Now here's where the magic starts. In your worksheet place values in columns C and D and you will see the number in column A in the row change so that the number is equal to the total [sum] of those in columns C and D. [see the image below] So you can see now that the formula in A1 has now been copied to all of the cells below it and also updated the formula automatically to refer to the cells in the same row. Copying Formulas with the Fill Handle Let's say that we have a spread sheet where we use a variety of formulas. For example if we look at the image below we see that we have used "sum" [gross salary], "minus" [Net Salary} and "percentage [tax rate] formulas". The image below shows the actual formulas

It would be time consuming [and boring] work if we had to set up the formulas in every row.

for each of those rows. The news is good, we can do it and here's how with a little help from the fill handle.

Place the mouse pointer over the black square in the bottom right corner of cell F3. The pointer will change to a plus sign " + ".

5 It would be time consuming [and boring] work if we had to set up the formulas in every row. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just copy the formulas that we had set up in the top row and have Excel automatically reset the cell references for each of those rows. The news is good, we can do it and here's how with a little help from the fill handle. Drag your mouse across cells 3D, 3E and 3F [they are the cells that contain the formulas] to mark them so that they look like the image below. Place the mouse pointer over the black square in the bottom right corner of cell F3. The pointer will change to a plus sign " + ". Click the left mouse button and drag the fill handle down to cell F6. Release the mouse button. The filled cells should contain the results of the Gross Salary, Tax and Net Salary formulas. The image below will show you the new copied formulas.

Microsoft Excel Basics Ben Johnson

Microsoft Excel Basics Ben Johnson Topic...page # Basics...1 Workbook and worksheets...1 Sizing columns and rows...2 Auto Fill...2 Sort...2 Formatting Cells...3 Formulas...3 Percentage Button...4 Sum function...4