Cell dragging autofill (Excel 2007)

[Terrifyingtesttube]

I have two rows of cells (in COL A, rows 1 and 2) that I want to select and use the lower right drag to fill in the next several columns.

When I select both cells (A1:A2) and drag, it looks like this:
COL
ROW A B C D
1 50.0% 150.0% 250.0% 350.0%
2 30.00 31.00 32.00 33.00

But when I select only A1 or only A2 and drag across it just repeats 50.0% or 30.00 all the way across, which is what I want it to do.

I know that there are other ways to accomplish this, for instance COPY & PASTE seems to work just fine, and does exactly what I want.

I'm just wondering if anyone knows why the drag action does this? If there is a mysterious check box somewhere to stop it? Or if this is just a bug in my machine...

 

[RHTPE]

Interesting. Behaves the same on my installation as well.

BUT, if I drag A1 to B1, then A2 to B2, then select A1:B2 and drag, it does exactly what you want it to do. Perhap Excel is assuming that when you select multiple cells in only one column (or row) that it has to increment by 1.


Ralph
Structures Consulting

 

[TheTick]

I've noticed this. It seems Excel needs two values in order to extrapolate, just like humans.

 

[RHTPE]

Or in this case, it needs 2 equal values on athe same row to not increment by 1.


Ralph
Structures Consulting

 

[IRstuff]

You can autofill a single row or column if you select at least 2 cells prior to corner-dragging.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[Terrifyingtesttube]

Thanks everybody for letting me know I'm not alone!

I think that it might have something to do with how the various cells are formatted. When I formatted them all as numbers (before, some were currency, percents, general, number) it did not increment any of them when I dragged the entire column over.

 

[Henneshoe]

FYI, after you finish dragging a small box appears in the lower right corner of the highlighted cells. Click on it and a menu will appear with the autofill options. Select "Copy Cells" to repeat 50.00% or 30. Select "Fill Series" to increment each column.