5. Work with series

5.1. Fill a range of cells with the same information

Enter a text, for example "Hello", in cell A1.
Position the mouse pointer at the right-bottom corner of the cell, the pointer appears as a +.
Click without releasing the mouse button and move the pointer to cell A10 then release.
The cell range from A1 to A10 is now selected, position the mouse pointer at the right-bottom corner of cell A10
Click without releasing the mouse button and move the pointer to cell C10 then release.
The cells from A1 to C10 are all filled with the value "Hello".

This is the case for example if we want to fill a column with an order number for the rows of our worksheet:

Enter 1 in cell A2
Position the mouse pointer at the right-bottom corner of cell A2, click and hold and drag to the desired line, for example 101.
The cells of column A are filled with the value 1
Use the Auto Fill Options button and select Fill Series
The series in column A is now filled with the values 1, 2… 100.

We can do otherwise to have the same result:

Enter 1 in cell A2 and the value 2 in cell A3
Select the two cells A2 and A3
Position the mouse pointer at the right-bottom corner of cell A3, click and hold and drag to the desired line, for example 101.
The cells of column A are filled with the values 1, 2… 100.

We can use this technique called Autofill to have for example an incrementation of 4 from the value 11:

Enter 11 in cell A2 and the value 15 in cell A3
Select the two cells A2 and A3
Position the mouse pointer at the right-bottom corner of cell A3, click and hold and drag to the desired line, for example 101.
The cells of column A are filled with the values 11, 15, 19… 403, 407.

Other situations where the autofill is automatic:

Enter "Customer 1" in cell B2, "Monday" in cell C2, "January" in cell D2, a date for example "01/02/2018" in cell E2 and "1st quarter" in cell F2
Select cells B2 to F2
Test the autofill and notice…

NB. The incremented feedback also applies to formulas; see the next section 6 on formulas.

The autofill feature has special options for the case of dates.

In a worksheet, select a cell and enter a date for example 02/01/2018
Use the autofill to fill a certain number of cells below.
Then use the Auto Fill Options button to customize this copy:
- to keep only the working days in your list, use the option Fill Weekdays
- to have monthly or annual intervals, use the options Fill Months and Fill Years respectively.

This command allows you to customize your series:

Enter a value in cell A1
Select the range A1:A20
Under the Home tab, in the Editing group, click on the Fill button, then on Series .... The Series dialog box appears.
In this dialog box, enter the Step value and optionally the Stop value.
If you choose the Linear type, the value will be incremented according to the value of the step
If you choose the Growth type, the value will be multiplied each time by the value of the step
You choose the Date type for a series of date values. In this case, choose the Date unit that suits you.