Dragging the Fill Handle

Once you write a formula, you rarely want to retype it for every row. The fill handle lets you copy a formula across many cells in seconds.

Select a cell and look at its bottom-right corner. You will see a tiny green square. That square is the fill handle. When you hover over it, your cursor changes from a thick white plus to a thin black plus.

Dragging that black plus copies the formula to wherever you drag.

Imagine a simple order sheet. Column A has quantities and column B has unit prices. You want column C to show the total for each row.

• A2 = 3, B2 = 10
• A3 = 5, B3 = 4
• A4 = 2, B4 = 25

In C2 you write a formula to multiply quantity by price. You only want to type it once, then fill it down to C3 and C4.