Creating Custom lists.

In Excel, when we type the number 1 in a cell and the number 2 in the underlying (or adjacent) cell, and then select the two cells and drag the fill handle down (or right), an ascending series is generated, which is built into the program, by default.
When we enter January and drag the fill handle, Excel complements that with the months of the year, which is also true for the days of the week.
But, this does not work in the same way for alphabets. When we type the letter A or a in a cell and then drag the fill handle, a range of cells are filled with the letter A as result or when we type A in a cell and the letter B in the underlying cell and then drag the fill handle, we get a range of cells with A and B in alternate cells, as a result.
In this example, we add the “Custom Lists” to the alphabets.
We will not type all alphabets but, we will enter them using a formula.
In cell A1, type = CHAR (65) and press Enter.
Excel provides us with the letter A.
The formula = CHAR (65) gives us the 65th character (1) according to the Windows ANSI character set.

In cell A2, type = CHAR (CODE (A1) +1) and press Enter.  Excel provides us with the letter B.
The CODE function () returns the numeric code for the first character in a string. This code is determined by the character set of your computer.
The formula = CHAR (CODE (A1) +1) gives the SIGN of the numerical code of the first character in cell A1 (code of A = 65) +1, which is the 66th sign of the Windows ANSI character set.

Select cell A2 and drag the fill handle down to cell A26.
As you can see, we now have the letters of the alphabet.

Select cells A1 through A26, copy them (Ctrl + C), then right-click in cell B1, and from the “Paste Special” menu that appears, select “Values” (1).
Why paste as values? Because, we want to include the alphabet list as a “Custom List” and not as a formula.

The selected cells are pasted as values in the cells B1 to B26.

We are now going to add the alphabetical list to “Custom Lists”.
Select the cells B1 to B26, click on the “Office” button (Excel 2007) (1) or the “File” tab in the “Ribbon” (Excel 2010) (2).

Excel 2010: In the subsequent menu click on “Options” (1).
Excel 2007: In the subsequent menu click on “Excel Options”.

Excel 2010: In the “Options” menu, click “Advanced” (1), scroll down and click “Edit Custom Lists”.
Excel 2007 : In the “Excel Options”, click on “Popular” and click on “Edit Custom Lists.”
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In the “Custom Lists” you’ll see that the list we have created is already selected in the “Import List from Cells” (1) text box. We click on “Import” (2) and then click OK twice to close both the dialog boxes.

Select columns A and B and press “Delete”.
Now type a letter of the alphabet in any cell in any Excel worksheet and drag the fill handle down or to the right. Depending on what we have entered, whether lowercase or uppercase, the alphabet list is in lowercase or uppercase.

So we can now create a common list of names in Excel. Just type the list you want to include, in contiguous cells, select that range and perform the operation to include them in “Custom Lists”.

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