AutoFill

 

Use AutoFill in Excel to automatically fill a series of cells. This page contains many easy to follow AutoFill examples. The sky is the limit!

1. For example, enter the value 10 into cell A1 and the value 20 into cell A2.

Numbers

2. Select cell A1 and cell A2 and drag the fill handle down. The fill handle is the little green box at the lower right of a selected cell or selected range of cells.

AutoFill Numbers in Excel

Note: AutoFill automatically fills in the numbers based on the pattern of the first two numbers.

3. Enter Jan into cell A1.

Month Name

4. Select cell A1 and drag the fill handle down. AutoFill automatically fills in the month names.

AutoFill Month Names

5. Enter Product 1 into cell A1.

Product Name

6. Select cell A1 and drag the fill handle down. AutoFill automatically fills in the product names.

AutoFill Product Names

7. Enter Friday into cell A1.

Day Name

8. Select cell A1 and drag the fill handle down. AutoFill automatically fills in the day names.

AutoFill Day Names

9. Enter the date 1/14/2019 into cell A1.

Day

10. Select cell A1 and drag the fill handle down. AutoFill automatically fills in the days.

AutoFill Days

11. Instead of filling in days, use the AutoFill options to fill in weekdays (ignoring weekend days), months (see example below) or years.

AutoFill Options

Note: also see the options to fill the formatting only and to fill a series without formatting.

12. Enter the date 1/14/2019 into cell A1 and the date 1/21/2019 into cell A2.

Dates

13. Select cell A1 and cell A2 and drag the fill handle down. AutoFill automatically fills in the dates based on the pattern of the first two dates.

AutoFill Dates

14. Enter the time 6:00 AM into cell A1.

Time

15. Select cell A1 and drag the fill handle across. AutoFill automatically fills in the times.

AutoFill Times

16. When Excel doesn’t recognize a list, simply create a custom list.

First Entry

Custom List

17. Use flash fill in Excel 2013 or later to automatically extract or to automatically combine data.

Use Flash Fill

Flash Fill

If you have Excel 365 or Excel 2021, you can also use the SEQUENCE function to fill a series of cells. This function is pretty cool.

18. The SEQUENCE function below generates a two-dimensional array. Rows = 7, Columns = 4, Start = 0, Step = 5.

SEQUENCE function

19. The SEQUENCE function below generates a list of odd numbers. Rows = 10, Columns = 1, Start = 1, Step = 2.

List of Odd Numbers

Note: the SEQUENCE function, entered into cell A1, fills multiple cells. Wow! This behavior in Excel 365/2021 is called spilling.