If you work Monday through Friday, Microsoft has a great secret shortcut for filling all of the weekdays in your spreadsheet. Episode 431 shows you how.
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Okay, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast. I'm Bill Jelen.
On Wednesday, I talked about some fill handle tricks.
I want to talk about some other things you can do with the fill handle.
I mentioned that if you typed in [ Ctrl+; ], you get today's date and then ofcourse, you drag the fill handle and it will fill in tomorrow, the next day, the next day.
Let me do that over in the next column [ Ctrl+; ].
And this time I'm going to format cells.
[ Ctrl+1 ] is the quick way to format cells. I'm going to choose the long date function.
So, here I can see that today is indeed Friday.
Now, instead of left clicking the fill handle and dragging, instead I'm going to right click the fill handle and drag.
And you'll notice that the tooltip pretends, like it's going to fill in Saturday, Sunday, Monday, etc.
When I let go, I have a whole bunch of new options down here.
In particular, I wanted to show you the Fill Weekdays.
Now, why do we get the pound signs?
Because the column's not wide enough.
And a lot of people will try and drag this margin, in order to get the right width, but instead, just double-click the margin makes it wide enough.
And you'll see that instead of filling in every day of the week, it only filled in Monday through Fridays.
That's great for anyone, who works in a office, where you only work Monday through Friday.
If you're anywhere else, in retail or in another country, where you don't have Saturdays and Sundays off, then this just doesn't work for you.
So, let me do that again. I'm going to put today's date [ Ctrl+; ] Instead of left clicking the fill handle, I'm going to right click and drag.
The options here are to Fill Days, Fill Weekdays, Fill Months, that would give me the 26th of every month.
Or Fill Years, would give me January 26 of every year.
Lots of great options there, if you right click the fill handle and drag.
Hey, thanks for stopping by. Will see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
On Wednesday, I talked about some fill handle tricks.
I want to talk about some other things you can do with the fill handle.
I mentioned that if you typed in [ Ctrl+; ], you get today's date and then ofcourse, you drag the fill handle and it will fill in tomorrow, the next day, the next day.
Let me do that over in the next column [ Ctrl+; ].
And this time I'm going to format cells.
[ Ctrl+1 ] is the quick way to format cells. I'm going to choose the long date function.
So, here I can see that today is indeed Friday.
Now, instead of left clicking the fill handle and dragging, instead I'm going to right click the fill handle and drag.
And you'll notice that the tooltip pretends, like it's going to fill in Saturday, Sunday, Monday, etc.
When I let go, I have a whole bunch of new options down here.
In particular, I wanted to show you the Fill Weekdays.
Now, why do we get the pound signs?
Because the column's not wide enough.
And a lot of people will try and drag this margin, in order to get the right width, but instead, just double-click the margin makes it wide enough.
And you'll see that instead of filling in every day of the week, it only filled in Monday through Fridays.
That's great for anyone, who works in a office, where you only work Monday through Friday.
If you're anywhere else, in retail or in another country, where you don't have Saturdays and Sundays off, then this just doesn't work for you.
So, let me do that again. I'm going to put today's date [ Ctrl+; ] Instead of left clicking the fill handle, I'm going to right click and drag.
The options here are to Fill Days, Fill Weekdays, Fill Months, that would give me the 26th of every month.
Or Fill Years, would give me January 26 of every year.
Lots of great options there, if you right click the fill handle and drag.
Hey, thanks for stopping by. Will see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
