An Excel Trick To Quickly Increment Dates For Each Row

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By: Drew McManus

You’ve probably found yourself in a position at some point or another where you needed to create a bunch or rows with dates that increased/decreased by a fixed amount for each row. You could spend your valuable time entering them manually or use this oldie but goodie click-and-drag trick to fill in those dates in seconds.

  1. Make sure your column is formatted for dates and enter the increment you need to use. In this example, I want each row to decrease by one day.
  2. Highlight both cells and look for a tiny square box in the bottom, right corner of the bottom cell, left click and hold.

  1. Continue to hold your left mouse button while dragging down.
  2. Excel will provide a handy notification showing you how far the date range spans if you stopped at that cell.

  1. Let go of the left mouse button and Excel will fill in the date at the desired increment.

You can use ascending or descending values as well as in any increment desired such as every three days, weekly, etc.

As a bonus, the same trick works with all numbers, months, and days.

Drew McManus
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Drew McManus
In addition to my consulting business, I'm also the Principal of Venture Industries Online but don’t let that title fool you into thinking I'm just a tech geek. I bring 20+ years of global broad-based arts consulting experience to the table to help clients break the cycle of choosing one-size-fits-none solutions and instead, deliver options allowing them to get ahead of the tech curve instead of trying to catch up by going slower. With the vision of legacy support strategy and the delights of creative insights, my mission is to deliver a sophisticated next generation technology designed especially for the field of performing arts. The first step in that journey began in 2010 when The Venture Platform was released, a purpose-designed managed website development solution designed especially for arts organizations and artists. For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, lead a team of intrepid arts pros to hack the arts, lead an arts business incubator, and love a good coffee drink.
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