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Copying and pasting a formula into 100,000 cells

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    Copying and pasting a formula into 100,000 cells

    Hi,
    Sorry to be a newb here but I have a tiresome problem

    I have spreadsheets of data that are multi-column and about 100,000 rows each. I need to copy a formula (=sum(A1/B1)*C1 for example) in cell D1 into the 100,000 cells below D1 in column D. I can copy D1 and then highlight D2 and drag into the cells below but this takes a LONG time for 100,000 rows.

    Is there an easier way? Thanks for your help.

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    Forum Expert ben_hensel's Avatar
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    Re: Copying and pasting a formula into 100,000 cells

    Assuming that C1:C100000 (or whatever exactly it is) all have data without blank rows,

    Then you can type the formula in D1,
    And then with the cell D1 selected (but not in in the cell, typing; with the whole cell selected),
    You can hover the mouse icon over the bottom-right corner of the cell. Your icon should change from a "white cross with black border" to a "black cross"; with the mouse icon like that, double-click.

    That should dropfill the contents of the cell down the column.

    It does this by marching down the column, and in each cell, checking the cell to the left and seeing if there's something there; if there is, it pulls the formula from the cell above exactly as if you manually pulled it, and then moves to the next column. If there's nothing to the left, it thinks it's reached the bottom of the table and it's done.

    So if there's a blank cell in C500 or whatever, it might terminate early. There's higher order-logic that gets involved if Excel thinks it's a Table as a particular data entity, so typically I'd bop down to the bottom row and make sure it filled correctly.

    More documentation in this help article, including proper ribbon commands instead of the tooltip shortcut I described above.
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    Re: Copying and pasting a formula into 100,000 cells

    Bloody brilliant Ben! THANK YOU. You've saved me a SIGNIFICANT amount o work. Thanks v much!

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