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SPEEDING UP THE DATA ENTRY


            OpenOffice Calc strongly supports the entering of text or other data. To speed up the process of data entry, there are
            a lot of important features in this program. We can drag and drop the cell content from one place to another by simply
            using a mouse click. Besides this, we can also use the Autofill feature, and cut/copy and paste the data to another place
            within the same or another worksheet. Let us now see how Autofill and copy/paste work in a spreadsheet.

            Autofill Using Fill Handle for Generating Series

            The Autofill feature helps you fill a predictable series automatically in a range of cells using the fill handle. This series
            could be a sequence of digits, months, days, time, etc.
            The fill handle (i.e., the plus sign (+)) appears when the mouse pointer moves over the bottom right corner of an active
            cell. Drag this handle down to the point till the series needs to be generated. It is important to write at least the first
            two members of the series as it would indicate the next elements in the sequence to be generated further.

            Let us understand this by taking an example of generating a series of multiples of 5.
            Step 1:  Type in the cells the first two numbers of the series, i.e., 5 and 10.
            Step 2:  Select the two cells you just typed in.
            Step 3:   Move the cursor to the bottom right corner of the selection, you will see that the cursor changes to a thin plus
                    sign (+). This thin plus sign is called a fill handle.
            Step 4:   Click and hold the left mouse button and drag the fill handle over the cells you want to fill. Here, drag the fill
                    handle to the right (or down) to fill in the series.

            Now let us do another example. Consider the following spreadsheet and perform the given tasks:













            •  Select cell A2. Drag it till A9 using Fill Handle. You will get the Dates, automatically increased by 1.
            •  Select cell B2. Drag it till B9 using Fill Handle. You will get a list of Months.
            •  Select cell C2. Drag it till C9 using Fill Handle. You will get a list of Days of the week.
            •  Select cell D2. Drag it till D9 using Fill Handle. You will get the Serial numbers automatically increased by 1.
            •  Select cells E2 and E3. Drag them till E9 using Fill Handle. You will get a list of Odd numbers.
            •  Select cells F2 and F3. Drag them till F9 using Fill Handle. You will get a list of Even numbers.
            After performing the above actions, the spreadsheet will look like as follows:




















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