I work with spreadsheets where I have to copy a value into the cells down a
long blank column next to another long row.

How do you highlight the range of cells to copy into?

I thought you could also highlight a blank cell (A) and a filled cell (B) to
anchor, then hit shift and down arrow to get a full range a1...b1000, then
move the cursor from B1000 to A1000 to get only the A column to paste into...

Does that question make sense?

If you have data in the column adjacent to the one you want to copy
down (either on the left or the right hand side), then you can double-
click the fill handle (the small black square in the bottom right
corner of the cursor with the cell selected).

The method you describe works in Lotus and Quattro, but not in Excel.
Click in your filled column (B in your example) then press <End once
followed by <down-arrow to take you to the bottom of column B, then
press <left-arrow to get into column A. Then put some other character
in this cell (I usually use a full-stop) and instead of pressing Enter
just press <End once followed by <up-arrow, which will take you to
the cell you want to copy from and leave that marker character behind
in the bottom cell. Click <copy (or CTRL-C) then move down into the
next cell, hold down the <SHIFT key, press <End once followed by
<down-arrow then release <SHIFT (to highlight the range to paste
into) then just press <Enter.

It takes much longer to describe than to carry out - it becomes second-
nature after a while.

Hope this helps.

Pete

On Oct 24, 7:31 pm, chris wrote:
I work with spreadsheets where I have to copy a value into the cells down a
long blank column next to another long row.

How do you highlight the range of cells to copy into?

I thought you could also highlight a blank cell (A) and a filled cell (B) to
anchor, then hit shift and down arrow to get a full range a1...b1000, then
move the cursor from B1000 to A1000 to get only the A column to paste into...

Does that question make sense?

If you want the same value in all blank cells.....................

Select column A and F5SpecialBlanksOK

Enter your value in active blank cell then CTRL + ENTER


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:31:01 -0700, chris
wrote:

I work with spreadsheets where I have to copy a value into the cells down a
long blank column next to another long row.

How do you highlight the range of cells to copy into?

I thought you could also highlight a blank cell (A) and a filled cell (B) to
anchor, then hit shift and down arrow to get a full range a1...b1000, then
move the cursor from B1000 to A1000 to get only the A column to paste into...

Does that question make sense?