How to Fill Sequential Data Quickly in Excel

How to fill sequential data quickly in Excel
Table of Contents

Fill command is a powerful feature of Excel. Instead of manually entering sequential data, fill command free you hand by automatically generating sequence for you.

Some Excel users may aware of filling linear sequence with fill command but not many of them realize that fill command does much more than that.

In this article, I will show you how to fill linear and growth sequence by fill command and fill handle. This will save you a lot of time.

Fill command VS Fill handle

Fill handleFill command
Sequence typeLinear sequence onlyboth linear and growth sequence
Best to be used whenthe sequence is shortthe sequence is long

Fill linear sequence with Fill command

The result is as below (cells in yellow).

Series inTypeStart valueStep ValueStop Value
RowsLinear1218

Step 1: Enter a start value in a cell

Enter a start value in a cell

Step 2: Select the Home tab

Select the Home tab

Step 3: Select Fill > Series

This opens the “Series” dialog box.

Step 4: Enter your commands and press OK

You might also be interested in 5 Types of Graphs to Create with REPT function

Fill Growth sequence with Fill command

Series inTypeStart valueStep ValueStop Value
RowsLinear232000

The result is as below (cells in yellow).

Repeat the step 1 to step 3 in the above tutorial

Step 4: Enter your commands and press OK

You might also be interested in How to prevent duplicate entries in Excel?

Things to be cautious about

1. Remember to put the stop value

Without the stop value, the sequence will not be shown.

2. Make sure the cell to put the sequence is not occupied

If you used the fill command and couldn’t see the result, you should check if the cell is occupied.

If the cell is not blank, the fill command won’t work.

You might also be interested in How to Display the Formula as Text in Excel?

Fill linear sequence with Fill Handle

If your case is simple, you can go ahead with fill handle instead of triggering the Series dialog box.

Here I would like to create the same sequence as the one I created with fill command.

Series inTypeStart valueStep ValueStop Value
RowsLinear1218

Step 1: Enter the first two number of the sequence

So, I would enter 1 and 3 in the first cell and second cell respectively.

Step 2: Select the first and second cell

Step 3: Drag the edge of the second cell till the end

Keep dragging until you reach the destination cell.

Fill Handle

Result

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