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How to Use AutoFill in Excel

AutoFill is a very handy feature of Excel. It allows you to quickly fill a series of data, such as days of the week, months, and consecutive numbers. We'll see how it works.

Click inside the cell B3 on the spreadsheet you started in the previous section, and type the text Monday. Like this one below

We're going to put the days of the week on the same line, on row 3 of our spreadsheet. But we don't have to type out the rest of the days. We only need to enter Monday, and we can do something called an Auto Fill. With Auto Fill, Excel will "Automatically Fill" in the rest of the days of the week for us. You do it like this:

Move your cursor to the bottom right of the B3 cell
Your cursor will change shape from a white cross to a black cross, as in the images below. The one on the left is the normal cursor, and the one on the left is the one we're after

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Normal Cursor

Auto Fill Cursor

When your cursor looks like the Auto Fill one, hold down your left mouse button and drag your mouse to the right
Drag your mouse to the cell H3, Like the one below

Let go of your left hand mouse button when your cursor is over the H3 cell
Excel will fill in the days of the week for you

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And that's Auto Fill. Certainly saves you some time typing in all those week days. And there are other Auto Fills you can use: months, years, and even formulas. We'll met Auto Fill again shortly, when we'll use it to fill a column of numbers. But let's press on with completing our spreadsheet.

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