How to drag Letters In Excel
How to AutoFill the Letters in the Alphabet in Excel
0:00 / 0:00
Quality:
Sharing buttons:
hello and welcome back to tips time
savers I'm Danny rocks and in today's
lesson I'm going to respond to a viewer
who wants to know how he can autofill
the letters of the alphabet the viewer
wrote in to say Danny I know I can use
autofill to increment dates so in this
case I'm using the autofill to increment
one day at a time I can also use
autofill which always begins by moving
your mouse to the lower right corner of
the cell as your starting cell and here
I'm incrementing by one hour if I want
to increment numbers here's a trick hold
down control as you click to autofill
holding down control reverses the
default which is to make a copy of a
number and will increment it by a series
of one we also have several built-in
lists in Excel for example the months of
the year and the days of the week
here's a great trick when you're
incrementing by days of the week and you
do not want to include Saturday and
Sunday in other words the weekend days
notice this little menu over here the
autofill options menu and we can choose
to fill the weekdays only so now we have
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
and not Saturday and Sunday they're not
the weekdays but what about letters we
go to autofill and we get a copy and
that's not what the viewer wants because
the viewer uses part numbers I've also
had similar requests from teachers who
use letters for grading well as it turns
out we can easily produce the letter A
with the formula when we use the
character formula let me take you over
here to another worksheet and I'm going
to show you the 255 characters that are
built into Excel they're part of the
ASCII ASCI code and characters 65 is the
letter A the uppercase letter a
character 66 is the uppercase letter B
notice over here the character 97 is the
lowercase a and later on in the lesson
I'm going to highlight some of the
are useful characters that you can use
so what we want to be able to do is we
want to be able to combine the character
function because although filling this
down without making a reference to a
series that can be incremented 6566
and the row function so here's the
formula that we're going to use we're
going to use the character function and
then nest inside it the row function and
make reference to a specific cell it
doesn't matter which letter you use for
the cell in this case I use a column a
so let me show you how this works
equals character and notice that I
always type in lower case I'm going to
nest inside this the row function for
the row function I might want to make
reference to a column it doesn't really
matter this time I'll use column C and I
want to put in there the first letter of
the character so 65 can then be
incremented to C 66 C 67 so close off
the matching parentheses and now when we
go to autofill there you go there are
the letters of the alphabet now of
course that gets a little tedious so I'm
going to show you how we can turn this
in to a built-in list we can turn it
into a built-in list so that we can
autofill it in any workbook on this
computer so we want to have a custom
list for the letters of the alphabet
remember at this point that these are
still formulas so let's right mouse
click and say copy right mouse click to
the selection and use paste special
values all right now keep them selected
and in Excel 2010 which I'm using the
new this lesson go to file come down
here to options and then the options
dialog box choose the Advanced tab
scroll all the way down to the bottom
and then click on the edit custom list
so here are the built-in lists and
notice over here that our selection so
if you leave the letters that you've
typed or use the formula and cut copy
paste special values they're selected
over here all we have to do is click
import and now we have a new custom list
with the letters of the alphabet
so I can come over here and I don't have
to start at the beginning I can start
let's say with the letter F and then I
can autofill and I can autofill in any
direction I can autofill in Reverse
I can autofill to the left and also I
can type in the lowercase so you don't
have to create a separate custom list
for the lowercase once you have the
uppercase in there it will work with
lowercase as well alright let's come
back over here and one of the characters
that I use all the time is the copyright
symbol so if I type in here equals
character C har 169 I'm going to get the
copyright symbol of course I could also
have the copyright symbol let me just
choose a different cell by coming over
here to the insert tab on the ribbon and
over here with the symbols choosing the
copyright there's another way that we
can use the copyright symbol by typing
in alt + 0 169 let me demonstrate I'm
going to hold down the Alt key and then
press 0 1 6 9 and I'm going to get the
copyright symbol now I especially find
this useful when I'm creating headers
and footers so let's change this view
let's go into page layout view and then
on the page layout I'm sorry I want to
be in the header up here and I get a
special menu over here so for the header
and footer I want to come down here into
the footer and over here in the middle
section of type in copyright space all 0
1 6 9 I'm going to get the copyright
symbol
and there you go so that's a lot easier
to to know that that symbol exists so
let's go back here into normal view you
and I want to return or get out of the
footer actually and come back here into
normal view come back here into the
character set if you'd like to receive a
copy of this worksheet I've been very
happy to send it on to you so you have
all of the characters or you can create
it for yourself just type in a series of
numbers and then make reference to it so
character 1 you'll see some of these are
non printing characters so it's really
very easy to be able to have a handy
list and just this I close out I remind
you that I have my new online bookstore
available and my first of a series of
video tutorials that are extended length
on average 90 minutes is on pivot tables
I make them available for Excel 2003
2007 and 2010 and visit me at shop the
company rocks they'll come and I will
look for you in the next lesson
