How to automatically create a series of values in Google Sheets

Key Takeaways

in this video I'm going to show you how to automatically create a series in Google sheets by using autofill so in this first example we're going to start with ordinary numbers and we're going to automatically create a list of numbers by using autofill and so here in column a we're starting with the numbers 1 & 2 and what we want to do is highlight both of these numbers and then as you'll see in the very bottom right hand corner of the selection is a small blue square and when you hover your cursor over this small blue square your cursor will turn into a plus sign or cross this is called the fill handle and what you want to do when this fill handle has appeared is click your mouse and hold the click and then drag your cursor downwards until you've reached the point where you want your list to end and then release your click and then you'll see that a list of numbers was automatically created you can also create a list of numbers that increments by 2 or 3 or any increment that you choose and so here we're starting with the numbers 2 & 4 and what we want to do is select both of these cells and again click the fill handle on the bottom right hand corner and drag your cursor downwards and as you can see since we started with the numbers 2 & 4 Google sheets automatically created a list that increments by 2 you can also automatically create a list of numbers to increments in every other row or in other words that skips every other row and so to do this simply start with a number in your first cell and then in the second cell that you highlight make that cell blank and then click the fill handle and drag it downwards and you will have created a list of numbers that increments in every other row you can also use autofill to create a horizontal list of number and so to do this simply begin with your first two numbers listed horizontally as is shown here in cells a2 and b2 then highlight these first two numbers or the first two cells that contain these numbers then click the fill handle and drag your cursor right then when you have reached the point where you want your list to end release your click and then you will have created a horizontal list of numbers automatically by using autofill another way that you can create a list of numbers is by using the row function and so when you enter the row function into a spreadsheet cell it will return a number that represents the row that the formula is in so for example when we enter equals row parenthesis a1 in cell a1 it will return a 1 and to automatically copy this formula down the column we simply follow the same process as before when we were creating a list of numbers with ordinary numbers without the formula and so we click the fill handle after highlighting the cell that has the formula in it and then as you're holding your click drag the cursor downwards and then release your click at the end of the list and you will have automatically created a list of numbers by using the row function and as you can see a row function has been copied into each cell in the column and autofill has automatically adjusted the cell references for us you can also use the row function to create a list of numbers by only using one formula if you use the array formula function along with the row function and so to do this in salt a 1 type equals array formula parentheses row parentheses a 1 : a now type 2 ending parentheses to close your function and press Enter and you will have automatically created a list of numbers by using the row function and you only had to use one formula because of using array formula along with the row function you can also create a horizontal list of numbers by using formulas much like what we did with the row function but this time we'll use the column function and so in cell a1 type equals column parentheses a 1 then type your ending parenthesis and press Enter and you'll see that the formula has returned the number of the column that the formula is in and so to create a horizontal list of numbers simply click the fill handle after highlighting the cell that your column function is in and drag the cursor right and once you've reached the point where you want your list to end release your click and you will have automatically created a horizontal list of numbers by using the column function and once again you'll see that autofill is automatically adjusted the references in the formula as the formula was copied into the cells to the right to create a horizontal list of numbers with the column function by using only one formula we'll use the array formula function along with the column function and so to do this in cell a1 type equals array formula parentheses column parentheses a 1 colon 1 now type your ending parenthesis and press Enter and you will have automatically created a horizontal list of numbers with the column function by using only one formula and we did this by using the array formula function along with the column function you can also use autofill to automatically create a sequence of dates in Google sheets and so to do this simply enter the first two dates in your sequence and in this case I want to increment by days and so the first two dates that I've entered are 1 - 1 2019 and 1 - 2 2019 these two dates are one day apart so I'm going to highlight these first two dates are the first two cells that contain those dates and then I'm going to click the fill handle and then as I'm holding my click I'm going to drag my cursor downwards and release the click when I've reached the point at the end of my list and then once I have released my click Google sheets will automatically have created a sequence of dates the increments by one day if you want to create a sequence of dates the increments by one month repeat this same process but begin your sequence with two dates that are one month apart and so as shown here in column B we're beginning with the dates 1 - 1 2019 and 2 - 1 2019 so these two dates are one month apart so I'm going to highlight both of these dates and then click the fill handle and drag the fill handle downwards release the click and you will have automatically created a sequence of dates the increments by one month now you can do the same thing to increment dates by one year by beginning your sequence with two dates that are one year apart so here I'm going to click the fill handle and drag it downwards having started with two dates that are one year apart and now I've created a sequence of dates the increment by one year now you can also use autofill to automatically list the days of the week or the months of the year and so in column D we're beginning our sequence with the days of the week Monday and Tuesday and so we're going to highlight these first two cells then click the fill handle and drag it downwards and then when you release your click you will have automatically created of the days of the week now you can do this same thing four months of the year and so in column e were beginning our sequence with the first two months of the year January and February and when we highlight these first two months or the first two cells that contained these months and then click the fill handle and drag it downwards when you release your click you will have automatically created a list of the months of the year you can also use autofill to automatically increment numbers that have a prefix or a suffix so in column a you can see that we're beginning our sequence with two numbers that each have the same prefix and so what we're gonna do is highlight both of these cells that contain these numbers with the prefix and then click the fill handle and drag it downwards then release your click and you will have automatically incremented this list of numbers while including the original prefix and you can do this same thing for numbers that have a suffix so in column B we're beginning our sequence with two numbers that each have the same suffix and so we're going to click the fill handle drag it downwards and then release the click and we've now automatically created a list of numbers that contain the same suffix so I hope that you liked this video if you did please hit the like and subscribe button and if you want to learn more about using Google sheets I've linked the article for this video below for you or you can also go to spreadsheet class com