Special Edition Using Microsoft® Office XP

Automatically Filling In a Series of Data

One common and tedious data-entry task is entering a sequence of numbers or dates in a column or row. Excel's AutoFill feature can handle this chore automatically by filling in information as you drag the mouse along a column or row. Use AutoFill to copy formulas or values; enter the days of the week, months of the year, or any series of numbers or dates; and even fill in custom lists of departments, category names, part numbers, and other information that you define.

Because of its tremendous number of options, even Excel experts sometimes have trouble coaxing the correct results out of AutoFill. The addition of Smart Tags in Excel 2002 makes this task somewhat easier. If using AutoFill has the wrong ...