The use of “Range”

Many formulas in Excel are dependent on the creation of a reference to a selected group of “Cells”.
A group of selected “Cells” in Excel is called a “Range” (“Range”)
“Range” is used as a reference to the information stored in the group of “Cells”.

For example:

We can have a column that keeps track of our sales representatives, and grouping them gives us the total of sales.

This is an example of how we can use “Ranges” in Excel.

We can select a single “Range” or multiple “Ranges”.

“Ranges” may be more than one “Range” adjacent to each other or overlapping each other.

When we specify a “Range”, each “Range” identified by Top left cell and a Bottom right cell, separated by a colon.

Example: To select a “Range” of B1 to B5, we write our formula in B1: B5

To select multiple “Ranges” we need these ranges separated by a comma (,).

For example: B1: B5, E1: E5

When only one “Range” is selected, there will be a black box around the selected “Cells”.

These selected “Cells” are black in Excel ’97 and blue or purple in 2000, 2003 and XP.

The “Active Cell” in the “Range” remains white, but is also in the black frame.

The range remains selected until you click somewhere in your worksheet, or press the arrows on your keyboard.

Selecting “Ranges”

You can select a “Range” by using your keyboard, mouse, or a combination of both.

To select a “Range” on your keyboard, select the first cell, hold the “Shift” key on your keyboard pressed and move the mouse pointer with the arrow on your keyboard.

To select a “Range” with your mouse, click the first cell and drag to the last cell of the range.

We can also speed up the process by doing a combination of both.
We click in the top left cell, hold the “Shift” key and click on the bottom right cell.

Selecting noncontiguous “Ranges”

You can select multiple noncontiguous ranges by pressing and holding the “Ctrl” key.

This can be useful, for example, if want to increase the width of the text in the bottom row and in the left row of our worksheet.

Insert data in a selected “Range”

Once we have selected our “Range”, it is easy to insert data.
The “Active Cell” in our “Range” is white, so we can enter data in this cell. We use our “Tab” key to move the cell to the right and we use the “Enter” key to jump to an underlying cell.

When we press the “Shift” key along with the above keys, we jump in the opposite direction.

Note that the cursor never jumps outside the selected range, once you’ve reached the rightmost cell, the cursor jumps to the next row.
Once you’ve reached the right bottom cell, the cursor jumps back to the top left cell.

And remains so, as long as the “Range” is selected.

The use of “Auto Fill”

“Auto Fill” is a handy feature in Excel that automatically fills in repetitive data.

For example, we can easily use the days of the week, months of the year or any repetitive data to be filled in by Excel.

Type Monday in the first cell, select and hold the “Fill Handle” at the bottom right of the “Cell”, and drag it to the right or below.

Excel will automatically add the following days of the week.

We can do the same for numbers, eg type 2 in the first cell, 4 in the underlying cell, select both cells and drag the fill handle down, Excel will be an interval of 2 in the cells following the order.

If the Excel data that you typed does not recognize, for example a name “Peter”, Excel will copy the name over the entire range that you selected with the “Fill Handle”.
This can sometimes be useful if we want to fill multiple cells with the same data.

In Excel XP and 2003, if we drag the “Fill handle” on our right, we can enter how we want to fill the selected cells.

After dragging choose “Series”

The “Series” dialog box opens.

Make your choice, type any values and click OK.

  Series dialog                                                                                                     Result:

                                               

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