Excel’s fill handle is a small rectangular control that appears whenever a cell or range of cells are selected. When the cursor is moved over the fill handle, it turns into a cross symbol, which can be dragged to fill in more cells.
The behavior of the fill handle varies depending on the content of the cell or range selected:
- When the selected range contains formulas, the formulas are copied to new locations and references are updated.
- When the selected range contains text or numbers with no recognizable pattern, values are copied.
- When the selected range contains text or numbers with a recognizable pattern, the pattern is continued.
When an adjacent column contains values, double-clicking the fill handle will extend values down the worksheet to match, following the behaviors described above.
An Excel formula is a way of defining a specific calculation in a worksheet. In Excel, all formulas must begin with an equals sign (=). For example, to add 100 to a value in A1, you can write a formula like this:
=A1+100
This formula will always add 100 to the value in A1, even when that value changes.
Formulas with Functions
Excel contains hundreds of pre-built formulas called functions . You can use functions on their own in formulas, or even combine multiple functions in a single formula.
For example, the this formula uses only the MAX function to calculate the maximum value in the first 100 cells in column A:
=MAX(A1:A100)
This formula uses the WORKDAY function to return a date 5 working days from a date in A1:
=WORKDAY(A1,5)
In a more complex example, this formula uses two functions to count the letter “a” in A1:
LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"a",""))
See this page for a full explanation of this formula.
Formulas vs. Functions
All functions are formulas. However, you can create formulas in Excel without any functions at all. For example, this formula adds A1 to A2 without any functions:
=A1+A2
