Thread: Fast Data Entry in Excel

ANYTIME YOU CAN ENTER DATA WITHOUT A having to type it yourself, you improve accuracy and save yourself effort. There are plenty of opportunities in Excel to enter data in a faster and smarter way than via the keyboard.

Probably the simplest example is Excel's Fill list feature, which lets you enter days of the week or months of the year automatically. Simply type one entry, such as January, into a cell and press Enter. Click to select the cell and you'll notice a small square-called a fill handle-in the bottom right-hand corner. When you hold your mouse pointer over the fill handle it changes to a plus sign, and you can click and drag to create the rest of the.

BASIC NUMBERS
Excel will fill a number series for you if you provide the first two numbers in the series (if you don't provide two numbers, Excel merely copies the value). For example, if you type 2007 and 2002 in adjacent cells, select both cells, and drag the fill handle, Excel creates the linear series 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and so on. Type in 2, 4, and Excel will fill in 6, 8, 10, and so on. Type a date and drag the fill handle and Excel assumes a linear series and increments each cell by one day; type alternating months-say, March, May, July-and Excel will continue the pattern.

If you hold the right mouse button as you drag the fill handle, when you let go a pop-up menu appears and you can choose to fill weekdays, months, or years instead of days.

CUSTOM LISTS
As with the months of the year and days of the week, you can create your own custom fill lists. Click the Office button and choose Excel Options I Popular I Edit Custom Lists to display the Custom List dialog You can copy a list from a range on the worksheet or click New List and type a list of entries in the aptly named List entries box, one per line. Click Add to add the
list and OK twice to finish. Now type any entry from your list in a cell and drag the fill handle to create the sequence.

entries in the sequence. Drag down or to the right (or to the left or upward) to create the other months in the series. A tool tip appears by the mouse pointer to tell you the entry that will appear in the cell if you let go of the left mouse button, saving you from having to count cells as you drag.

You can start the year at any point, and the same technique works if you type in a day of the week. You can also use abbre-viations for days of the week (Mon, Tue, Wed) and for months of the year (Jan, Feb, Mar). This is one way to speed up data entry, but it's not the only way. Here are some other techniques to save your valuable time whilw you enter the data in Excel.

MORE-COMPLEX SERIES

To create a nonlinear series, type the first value in the series, right-click, and drag on the fill handle. When the Context menu appears, select Series to open the Series dialog. Here you specify a Growth series, for example To test this, type number 7 in a cell, right-click it and drag, choose Series I Growth and set the step value to 2, and click OK This cre¬ates a sequence in which each number is followed by itself multiplied by two.

DROP-DOWN EASE

A drop-down list is handy when you have a set of options you want your user to choose from-and it conveniently averts typos. On a new sheet, type a list of entries. select it, and type a name for the list in the Names box on the left of the Formula bar. On a new worksheet, select the cells in which the data is to appear. Click the Data tab on the Rib¬bon and choose Data Validation. From the Settings tab choose Allow

I List and in the Source box type = and the name you gave to the selected list (for example. =employees). Click OK. Now when you click a cell you can select the cell entry from the drop-down list.

FORMS
The Form button is not on the Excel 2007 Ribbon. but you can add it to the Quick Launch bar. Click the Office button. choose Excel Options I Customize, and in the Choose commands from list pick Commands Not in the Ribbon. Locate and select the Form command. Click Add and then OK. To display the form. click in a table of data and click the Form button. You can now enter data into your table using the Form dialog. which is quicker and more convenient than navigating around a very large table.