Excel keyboard shortcut to 'continue' number pattern

Question

Excel keyboard shortcut to 'continue' number pattern

Say in a collection of adjacent cells, I have a sequence of numbers such that in every cell one number appears: e.g. 2,4,6,8,10.

In the normal, mouse case, I would want to extend this pattern by placing my cursor at the bottom right-hand corner of the last filled cell (i.e. that which contains 10) and then pulling the cursor to the right.

I want to find a keyboard shortcut to extend the pattern without a mouse. I have used ctrl+ R but unfortunately that only copies the first value (i.e. 2) into the remaining cells. Any ideas?

Answer 1

For your exact stated problem, you can use the keyboard shortcut of Alt-E-I-S and press "Enter" to accept the dialog's choices. Select the last couple cells, at least, so Excel can work out your pattern of adding 2 to each previous series element, then hit the key combo.

This uses a feature that's been in Excel as long as I have used it. Not precisely "Flash Fill" or even "Fill" but those seem to use it, so same thing more or less.

Alt-H-F-I will access the "Fill" feature in the "Home" menu (oops, sorry, the "Ribbon's Home Tab" — gosh, there's no menu-ing system there, nothing to see there at all). Then you can select a choice, though "Series" as the obvious choice gets you exactly to where the first shortcut did and more directly. Flash Fill is one of its choices.

Alt-A-F-F accesses Flash Fill itself, directly. But it is of no use here.

Ctrl-E, Ctrl-D, and Ctrl-R all do NOT do what you ask for. They can, supposedly, but it would require you to add a row for Excel to consider as the example. And... then fail anyway, usually, if the example is not complicated enough to make clear what you want.

What I cannot find and do not know, is how to exactly duplicate the mouse's achievement using the keyboard. Even the usually useless "Extend" mode does not seem to hook into it any way I've found today.

Answer 2

Ctrl+R does work, but you have to do it exactly in the right way. The following is how to do so with only using the keyboard :

• Click the last cell in the row that has the formula (or move to it using the keyboard arrow keys)
• Press Shift+Right-arrow repeatedly to select cells to the right
• This will select the formula cell and the required cells to its right
• Press Ctrl+R.

The formula will now be extended over the selected cells.

Answer 3

You must select a least 2 cells for Excel to recognize the pattern. Then, you can drag down to fill the other cells as shown on the demo below. This works with recent Excel versions, not sure about Excel 2010.