Drag and fill

You can drag and fill the contents of a single cell, or range of cells, to another range of cells. Certain types of ordered data, such as numbers, days and months, are incremented automatically. Follow these steps:

  1. Click into the source cell.

  2. Move the mouse pointer over the cell handle in the bottom right corner of the cell:
      image\sp11.gif

  3. When the mouse pointer turns to a cross, hold down the left mouse button and drag the cell outline till it covers the area you want to fill.

The contents of the source cell will fill the selected cells. Note that only cells adjacent to the source cell -either up, down, left or right - can be filled. To fill an area, rather than just a column or row range, follow steps 1 to 3 above then drag the range you've just created to fill the remaining area.

If the source cell contains a number or a text string with a number at its end, the selected cells will be filled incrementally. Here are some examples:

Source cell

Target range after drag and fill

1998

1999, 2000, 2001

Product1

Product2, Product3, Product4

Jan

Feb, Mar, Apr

Monday

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

The last two examples show how the built-in ordered lists can be used (see Custom lists for more information).

Sometimes, when the source cell contains a number or member of a custom list, you may not want a range to be filled with incremental values. In these cases, you should first select the required range and then select the Fill command from the Edit menu or click on the Fill button on the toolbar. In the "Fill" dialog make sure you leave the Series box unselected and then click on OK. The contents of the source cell will be copied exactly (without incrementation) to each of the cells in the selected range.

See also:

Drag and drop

Copying and moving information