Entering data and AutoFill

Elvin needs to type all the months of the year and the 30 days of a month into a table. Typing each one by hand is tiring and invites mistakes. Excel, however, can continue a list on its own as soon as it sees the first value or two. But first, let's learn to enter data correctly.

Typing and editing

Click a cell and start typing. Enter confirms the entry and moves down; Tab moves right. Press Esc to cancel what you typed. If you type into a filled cell, the old content is replaced completely; to fix just part of it, press F2 or double-click the cell.

Text, numbers and dates

Excel works out the type of what you type. Text lines up on the left edge of the cell, numbers on the right — the easiest way to check that a number was really recognised as a number. For Excel, a date is actually a number: 1 January 1900 is 1, and each following day is one more. That is why you can subtract one date from another to get the number of days between them.

The fill handle: let Excel continue

1. 1
   Type the starting values

   Type 1 in A1 and 2 in A2. Excel will learn the step from these two values.

2. 2
   Select both cells

   Select the range A1:A2 with the mouse. The fill handle appears in the bottom-right corner of the selection.

3. 3
   Drag the fill handle

   When the pointer turns into a thin black +, drag the handle down to A10. The cells fill with 3 to 10.

4. 4
   Adjust the result

   Use the Auto Fill Options button that appears at the end to choose Copy Cells, Fill Series or Fill Formatting Only. For dates it also offers Fill Weekdays and Fill Months.

Flash Fill: filling from an example

Say column A holds full names such as “Aysel Nuriyeva” and “Murad Quliyev”, and you want only the first names in column B. Type Aysel in B2, then choose Data › Data Tools › Flash Fill or press Ctrl+E — Excel spots the pattern and fills the rest. Note that Flash Fill is not a formula: it writes the result once, so if column A changes, column B will not update.