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Designing Your Own Fills

In addition to using AutoFill to quickly enter the month and weekday names and abbreviations, Excel can fill in any list of values. You can create a new, customized list with values that you often use. For example, you can create a custom list for the employees in your department or for products you sell. After you have shown Excel the new list, any time you type the first value and drag that cell's fill handle in any direction, Excel fills the remaining cells with your list.

To Do: Create a Custom List

To add your own custom list to Excel's repertoire of lists, perform these steps:

The next time you type the label Dept 1 in a cell and drag the fill handle to the right or down the worksheet, Excel fills in the remaining departments. If you fill only four cells, Excel uses the first four values. If you fill nine or more cells, Excel fills all nine departments and starts repeating the department names for any number over nine.

If you enter a series in a worksheet and then decide that the series would make a great AutoFill list (in case you want to add the list to another worksheet), Excel doesn't make you re-enter the list. Just select the entire list by dragging the mouse pointer through the list. When you open the Custom Lists tab in the Options dialog box, click Import to add the selected range to the AutoFill entries.

To Do: Enter Large Amounts of Series Data

AutoFill is fine for a typical range of titles and for a series of a dozen or fewer entries, but some data series include numerous entries. When you want to enter a larger number of values in a series, perform these steps:

Table 8.1. Types of Series

Series Name	If You Type…	Excel Can Complete with…
Linear	0	1, 2, 3, 4, 5
	–50, 0, 50, 100	150, 200, 250
Growth	2, 4	8, 16, 32, 64
	10, 100	1000, 10000
Date	1-Jan, 1-Apr	1-Jul, 1-Oct, 1-Jan
AutoFill	Acctg-101, Acctg-102	Acctg-103, Acctg-104
	Year '03	Year '04, Year '05