This lesson is exclusive to members

Microsoft Excel 2016 Bootcamp - Zero to Hero Training

Repeating formulas

Daniel Walter Scott || VIDEO: 1 of 24

Download Exercise Files Download Completed Files

You need to be a member to view comments.

Join today. Cancel any time.

Sign Up

Hi there. In this video, we're going to look at repeating formulas.

So from your 'Exercise Files', open up 'Repeating Formulas'. And then slowly wait for Excel to open. Simple list here, what I'd like to do is figure out how much stock I have in, the inventory I have in stock in terms of dollar value. I want to times this quantity by the cost per unit. So, what I'm going to do is, in here, I'm going to create a formula. We always start a formula by having the equal '=' at the beginning. Then we decide which cells we want to work with. I want to work with this cell here, 'C4', and I want to times that, so we use this little asterisk '*' key. It's normally hiding under your '8'. And then I want to times it by this one here, 'D4'. I'm going to click 'Enter'. So it's times that by that, and it gives me my value.

Now I don't want to have to do this over and over, I could copy and paste my formula. Click 'Copy', and then down here, oops, 'undo'. And click in the cell and 'Paste' it. The problem is, it's still using 'C4*D4' which is up there. So if I hit 'return' it's going to give me the same value even though these are different.

So, easy way to do it is, just select this cell here. And in the bottom right corner here, there's this little dot,click and drag this down. We're kind of expanding this box. And it's clever, thank you Excel. It goes down and switches out, you can see now, this one, if I click on it, it's 'C5' and 'D5' instead of this 'C4' and 'D4'. It's done that for all of them down there. So that's a nice quick way to go and repeat your formulas using Excel.

What you can also do with it is, instead of just repeating formulas, you can repeat for pretty much anything. If you're sitting there, and you're on Excel, and you're doing something like, "I wish I could do this over and over again," it's probably that feature there.

Things like the month, its's 'January', if I click, hold, and drag this down, it's pretty clever, starts working out what you need. You can do the same left or right, nice and easy. It works with days of the week as well. 'Monday', you don't have to put the full thing in, and drag.

And any sort of numbered list, you can see this one here, 'Item 11', say we need a bunch more. Numbers, goes through and adjusts those. Doesn't work for everything, but just clicking and dragging, give it a try.Super easy for repetitive things.

All right, I will see you in the next video.