Keyboard Shortcut - Highlight to bottom of range based on data one column over

Question

I work with similar data pulls frequently and am trying to be more efficient in how I transform them.

Typically, I will autofill a field down to the end of the range one column over by using the little black cross displayed when mousing over the active cell:

In this example, I need to fill rows 3 on down by continuing the series in column A. If I use keyboard shortcuts, I can reach the fill (and autofill) dialogue box, but I first have to scroll down to highlight to the bottom of the dates' data one column to the right. This can be very tedious in a big data set, because Shift+↓ takes me to the bottom of the sheet, not the intended range.

The black cross icon accessed through the mouse understands this logic, but I can't figure out how to reproduce it with shortcuts.

Any thoughts?
It would be super helpful!

Answer 1

Select the first cell of the date column (near 1 - with date 2018-05-27 in it), then

• Ctrl+Shift+↓ - to select all dates,
• then Shift+Left - to expand selection to the left,
• then Shift+Tab - to make the cell with 1 active, without canceling the current selection,
• then Shift+Left - to shrink selection to the left column.

Answer 2

Starting from any cell in the incomplete column (1 or 2 in your example):

• Right arrow to get into the column of dates
• Ctrl + Down arrow to go to the bottom of the column of dates
• Left arrow
• Ctrl + Shift + Up arrow to select all the blank cells in that column up to the one beneath the 2.

Then type a formula (e.g., =A5+1) and press Ctrl + Enter to enter in all selected cells, or use Ctrl + D to fill down from, or whatever you need.