The Basics / Auto Fill
Subtitles of the Movie
Just as drag and drop is a replacement for cut and paste, there's a feature called Auto Fill which can be used in place of copy and paste commands. For instance, if I add a car payment to the spreadsheet and wish to have the same value recorded for each month. I enter the value just one time, then go to the very bottom-right corner of the selected cell that I wish to copy. Here you'll see a black cross rather than a white cross. This is the cross used to auto fill or copy this value. Once you see that cross, click and hold on the mouse, and drag in the direction that you wish to copy that value. Now that the selection area is expanded over all the cells where I wish that value to appear, I can release my mouse button. The auto fill feature can work in various ways. For instance, to continue a current series, my labels for January, February and March can be expanded to June using auto fill. I'll simply select March, get the auto fill black cross, and then click and drag to the right until I see June appear as the tool tip underneath my pointer. When I release, each of those months are copied into the cells consecutively. These are specific lists that have been added to the auto fill feature. To see the lists I'll go to the tools menu, to options. Make sure the custom lists tab is selected. As you can see there are lists for days of the week, and months of the year already in excel. If I wish to add my own kind of list to use with auto fill, I'd select new list and then type in my list entries. Let's say that there's a list of names that I'm continuously having to add as labels in my spreadsheet. I simply type those names in one time, click add and then click ok. Now all I have to do is type the first name on the list, like Bob. Enter that information, go back and select the cell and get the auto fill cross. When I click and drag, it will then fill in the rest of the names in that series. If I click and drag beyond the number of names in the list, for instance by typing in Bob, getting the auto fill cross in the bottom right corner of that cell, and dragging beyond the four names it will start to repeat that series, as you can see. If you wish to edit or delete a custom list from auto fill, go back to the tools menu, to options, and on the custom lists tab select the list you wish to edit. To add to it or edit it, click in the list entries box and change your list, or simply click the delete button to get rid of it altogether. It will warn you the list is permanently deleted. In other words, you cannot click the undo button to bring this back. I'll go ahead and click ok to remove that from our custom lists area. Clicking ok takes me back to the spreadsheet. I'll go ahead and click ok to remove that from our custom lists area. Clicking ok takes me back to the spreadsheet.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Microsoft Excel 2000 |
| Author: | Lorie Flenner/NMG |
| SKU: | 33101 |
| ISBN: | 1889347868 |
| Release Date: | 1999-11-22 |
| Duration: | 8 hrs / 103 lessons |
| Captions: | For Online University members only |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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