So I want to show off one more item here and this is something. that I use all the time when I am dealing with calculations inside of Excel.
And for that matter there is other scenarios outside of calculations that I use this for as well. It is a huge feature, one that has all over my Excel documents, It is called Autofill.
We have been plugging in calculations. We got one calculation in B8 for January and we then moved to February we do that, one we go to march, we do that one we go do the totals for each of the bills. We did Min Max and Average, we did each of them individually.
There is a lot of similarities between each of our functions. For example, my first function in B8 cell for January it is a SUM function and it is summing up the 4 cells directly above it, The next one it is the exact same formula, the exact same function, The only difference is it is in a new position, but I still want the 4 cells directly above it. And then the next one it is in a new position, but it is still the 4 cells up above. There should be a way to automate that, Yes that there is, and it is the Autofill.
I am going to go ahead once again all that work, I am going to delete it out. Here is what I am going to do. I am going to create the first one at B8 and I am going to use the shortcut key (Alt =). So now I need to populate the rest.
Earlier when we were doing the percent I had to copy paste you created the first one copy pasted, it copied it paste it and it ended up using that relative and absolute referencing that we talked about. While here the Autofill command. If I go to B8 cell, the Autofill is this little box in the corner this commonly overlooked feature.
It is going to do so much for you and automate your steps. If I move my cursor right over the top of that little box, I get a little black plus sign. Now if I click and hold down, I can drag that over all the way there and it is just going to copy that formula for us.
It is like copy and paste and it is just performing the exact same formula just based on its new position, and it is important that we understand the relative and absolute referencing. It is easy to do and it is short.
Now what I want you to do is complete that. Use the Autofill populate those cells, get rid of those silly little errors, and then I want you to recreate the percent of one recreate, the first one and then copy it down. Now you are going to need to remember relative versus absolute right the first time you do it. You might get an error but then just go back in and adjust the cell referencing, no the dollar signs. Complete that, use the Autofill to do the rest, complete for right now. And we are going to move into our next set of topics.
So hopefully you are enjoying this, you are learning something new, even if you have been using Excel for years.
Hopefully, you picked up something new as we have been talking about functions inside of Excel.