asked on

populating excel columns with incrementing information

microsoft excel - there must be a way of doing this but I have no idea where to start so if anyone can help please?
I want to create a column that will look something like this:
[PACS_001]
[PACS_002]
[PACS_003]
...
[PACS_300]

there must be some way of automating the population of this column - and I have another 3 or 4 columns that will need something similar - so a formula that can do this work would be VERY useful to me

Sam Jacobs

That's actually built into Excel. If you enter PACS_001 in a cell and position your cursor in the lower-right corner until it changes to a plus sign:

Then drag it down ...

Then release ... and it should automagically populate!

Paul Vincent

ASKER

Thanks Sam for the quick reply - I knew it would be something simple, but not quite that simple :)
Unfortunately...
I do require the square brackets too, and if I try the process you show using square brackets I get this

without with square brackets
PACS_001      [PACS_001]
PACS_002      [PACS_001]
PACS_003      [PACS_001]
PACS_004      [PACS_001]
PACS_005      [PACS_001]
PACS_006      [PACS_001]
PACS_007      [PACS_001]
PACS_008      [PACS_001]
PACS_009      [PACS_001]
PACS_010      [PACS_001]
PACS_011      [PACS_001]
PACS_012      [PACS_001]

any thoughts how to get around this please? I tried using the 'flash fill' optionusing the method you suggested, and leaving a space between the last digit and the close square bracket, this partially worked in that it populated as follows
[ PACS_001 ]
[ PACS_002 ]
[ PACS_003 ]
[ PACS_004 ]
[ PACS_005 ]
[ PACS_006 ]
[ PACS_007 ]
[ PACS_008 ]
[ PACS_009 ]
[ PACS_010 ]
but after 10 the cells are blank

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION