Parent Column Cells

Originally Posted by malikah

I recently imported some data from Filemaker into Excel and it left a whole bunch of empty cells under each parent cell - or under each cell where there was a "category" (from top to bottom of the columns). What I want to do now is fill the blank cells with the cell above them which has text in it (their parent cell). So far I've used Edit > GoTo > Special > Blanks, to select the blank cells. Now I want to fill them with the heading of their parent cell. I would do it manually but there's a few thousand! As a final example: cell A1 has the text "car" and cell A27 has the text "bus" - I need to fill all the blank cells in between with "car" and "bus" etc....

Hi,

one way,

Insert a new column B
in B1 put =A1
in B2 put =If(A2="",B1,A2)

and formula fill that as far as required.

Copy column B, and then Paste Special = Values back over itsself

Delete Column A

Let me know how you go.
---

Originally Posted by malikah

>>>>Hmm didn't seem to work. HERE'S a link to a diagram and explanation.

"didn't seem to work" means what?

did you get an inserted column B?

did you formula fill correctly?

did you get details from column A?

can you tell me what it did do ?
---

Originally Posted by malikah

Ok, this is where I got lost. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm still a bit of a novice when it comes to formulas etc.

Problem solved - but not the way I wanted. I just exported the file differently from Filemaker: I first exported the database as a html table and then copied the table into excel - no more blank cells. But perhaps someone could resolve the issue based on what I wanted to do, in case someone was following this topic in hope of an answer. Thank you for your previous suggestions

Oh yes,

in http://www.excelforum.com/showthread.php?t=584092 is one that I had flagged as 'The Beginner'a link that's really needed is the Fill Handle'

That is a required knowledge if you want to use Excel.

Another option was a small amount of VB code, but I think that would have confused you even more.

Good to see that you have resolved your problem.
---

added, did you try the .CSV format between Excel and Filemaker?

Does the Export have the same facility as the Import, permitting you to specify fields that are required from the list?


---