Use AutoFill and Flash Fill

Sometimes you need to enter a lot of repetitive information in Excel, such as dates, and it can be really tedious. But the AutoFill feature can help. Or say you have information in Excel that isn't formatted the way you need it to be, and going through the entire list manually to correct it is daunting. In this case, Flash Fill (introduced in Excel 2013) can do the work for you.

AutoFill and Flash Fill are tremendous time savers, and in this course, we'll cover them in more detail. If you prefer to skip the video and go straight to written instructions, see Fill data automatically in worksheet cells or Split a column of data based on what you type.

AutoFill and Flash Fill

Watch this video for a quick introduction to AutoFill and Flash Fill, two helpful time savers that we'll cover in more detail in this course. (1:47)

AutoFill

Instead of entering data manually on a worksheet, you can use the Auto Fill feature to fill cells with data that follows a pattern or that is based on data in other cells. (3:01)

Flash Fill

Use Flash Fill, new in Excel 2013, to fill out data based on an example. Flash Fill typically starts working when it recognizes a pattern in your data, and works best when your data has some consistency. (3:10)

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