Copy and Paste Part 1: Selecting Multiple Cells

This is the first in a series about copying and pasting in Excel.  It may seem a little too basic of a topic, but Excel offers several helpful pasting options that many folks do not even know exist. In this series, I will show y'all those features that I use regularly when working with my Evergreen reports.

Someone had recently asked me how to copy and paste a formula throughout a table. (Specifically, they were stuck on step 5 on this handout.) I thought, "What a great idea for a post!" So I jumped right into writing a detailed explanation of formulas and ways to construct formulas so that they can be pasted throughout a table. I was almost done with post before realizing that I had totally jumped past the original question.  The original question was really about the mechanics of selecting multiple cells in Excel so that the formula could be pasted in one fell swoop.

Everyone needs to know how select multiple cells to really take advantage of Excel. It might be easier to understand how this works and why it is useful by watching Excel in action:




To reiterate what I stated in the video, to select multiple cells you can either:

-- Click one cell with the mouse, then hold down the Shift key while using the arrow keys to select adjacent cells,  
OR
-- Click one cell with the mouse, then while continuing to press down the mouse button, drag the mouse to select adjacent cells

I also mentioned the following keyboard shortcuts:

To copy --> Ctrl + C
To paste --> Ctrl + P

Now there are other ways to select multiple cells in Excel that I did not cover in the video, and I imagine I will cover those as the need arises.  But for good measure, I will go ahead and mention them here:

-- You can select an entire column or row by clicking on the column or row headings. The headings are the grey boxes with either letters (above each column) or numbers (beside each row).

-- You can then select multiple rows and columns following the same method that you learned in the video (that is, using the Shift and arrow keys, or by using the mouse).

-- You can also select non-adjacent cells by holding down the Ctrl key while clicking each of the individual cells you want to select.

I hope this was helpful to some of y'all. If you have any questions about anything mentioned above, please feel free to ask me in the comments section.