Dear Computer Lady,
A question about Excel — a pretty elementary question, I think, but I am not a practiced Excel user. I have (and use slightly) Excel 2007 and 2010 on my laptops. I use the program to maintain a record of the business miles I drive each year, for tax purposes, so each year I have to try to recreate the same form to fill in.
Here’s the question: How do I ask the program to carry out the same procedure in multiple rows of the same column? (e.g. if I want column H to show the product of (G – F) in each row, and want this to happen in every row from 1 to 67, how do I program that?)
I hope this is clear enough. Thank you for any help you can give! Jo
Dear Jo,
Thank you so much for your detailed description! It makes it very easy to answer your question.
To make every row in column H show the product of (G – F), first make your formula in the first row. Make sure the formula is correct, and showing you the correct results, then, follow these simple steps.
1. Click on the cell with the formula once to highlight it.
2. Notice in the lower-right corner of the highlighted cell there is a small box. Hover your cursor over that small box and it will turn into a plus sign.
3. When your cursor turns into a plus sign, hold down your left mouse button and drag down as many rows as you want to copy the formula to.
4. Release your mouse button, and excel will copy the formula to each row, relative to that row.
Now, if the formula in row 3 is G3 – F3, the copied formula in row 4 would be G4 – F4.
Elizabeth
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Elizabeth Boston is a Web designer, Social Media Consultant and managing editor of, “Ask The Computer Lady”.
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I also use Excel for taxes from year to year. I re-save the file with a new name and remove the contents (while keeping the formulas intact). For instance, at the end of 2014, I’ll use ‘save as’ for my spreadsheet to create one for 2015. The 2014 will remain in place for historical purposes, and the new 2015 file will be ready for me to edit!