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How to autofill in Excel

Here's how you can quickly autofill cells in Excel sheets!
Kevin Pocock
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Reviewed By: Kevin Pocock

How to autofill in Excel
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Table of Contents

If you want to learn how to autofill in Excel, you’ve landed on the right page.

When you're filling out spreadsheets, it can take a lot of time for you to fill data in the cells, especially when dealing with a large dataset. Therefore, you need to learn how to automate tasks. For example, autofill in Excel is a feature that can help quickly fill the cells with data.

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In this guide, we’ll go through how to autofill in Excel so you can save a lot of time.

1

How to autofill in Excel

Here are the steps you need to follow to autofill in Excel sheets.

Step

1

Highlight the cells

First, highlight the first cell in the column.

Step

2

Move the cursor in the lower right corner of the cell

Next, move the cursor in the lower right corner of the cell until the cursor changes to a plus sign.

How to insert a number using Autofill in a microsoft excel spreadsheet.

Step

3

Drag it down

Then, hold and drag down like you normally would. This will fill the cells with the data of the first cell.

A screenshot of an Autofill in Excel spreadsheet.

But if you want to continue a sequence instead of just putting the data of the first cell in every cell, you need to select the first two cells.

For example, you can put ‘1’ in the first cell and ‘2’ in the second cell. Then, when you select both cells and drag them down, Excel will fill the cells in a sequence.

An example of a spreadsheet with Autofill in Microsoft Excel.

Alternatively, you can also double-click on the + sign to fill the cells quickly. This can prove to be useful when dealing with a large data set, but make sure there are values on the right or left side of the column.

A spreadsheet with a list of names and numbers that uses Autofill in Excel.

Final thoughts

Autofilling in Excel can really save you time, and as demonstrated above there are a couple of ways you can do this. We hope that these methods will soon become second nature, and soon you will be autofilling formulas effortlessly! 

Learn more about Excel and its functions through these easy-to-follow guides:

About the Author

Kevin Pocock

Kevin has a broad interest and enthusiasm for consumer electronics, PCs, and all things consumer tech. And more than 17 years experience in tech journalism.