Drag and Drop

Drag and drop techniques can take a little practise to master. To illustrate, start with a blank spreadsheet and select cell A2 by simply clicking in it once. Notice that the border changes to a bold outline and in the bottom right hand side is an Autofill (or drag ) handle.

type the word item in this cell.Move the cursor slowly over the cells autofill handle. Notice the cursor changes from an arrow to a cross. When the cursor changes, press and hold the left mouse button and drag the autofill handle down to to a new location (say A5). Release the mouse button.

Notice the selected cells now have a grey background and are all filled with the word item. This technique works both vertically and horizontally.

Now click and hold down the left mouse button, anywhere on one of the greyed cells (not the autofill handle though). Still holding the button down drag it across to column C and release the button. Notice the whole block of cells has moved to the new position.

Auto series

Now lets repeat the exercise, this time type item 1 in cell A2 and see what happens. This time instead of all the cells being filled with the word item they are now item 1, item2 up to item 4. This is known as an auto series. Try it again, this time start with the word January. Now the series is the months of the year from January to April.

Suppose I just want to move a single cell?

There are two ways to do this. The first is to click on the cell, and while holding the mouse button down, move the cursor to an adjacent cell and back again. Then release the button. Now only a single cell is selected and it can be moved as before.

Another way to do this is to first select the cell, then click the cell again, this time holding down the ctrl key to just select the single cell. moved. Now you can move it as before.

This is only a brief summary of the basic drag and drop techniques. For a more detailed explanation use the on-line help and search for drag and drop. There you will find other techniques which can be used.