Copy and Paste Formula from One Cell to Multiple (How?)

I asked about the same problem:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5080893

And the autofill mechanism apparently only works to copy a cell to the right or down.

I too have the same question and am astonished that you cannot past one cell into a range. Clearly, this make Numbers completely unusable for me. It really is absurd you can't have this basic functionality.

In the "old days", before autofill, double clicking the lower corner of the cell, etc., we would copy one row of equations, then paste several times (say 9) to create an array of equations of 11 rows. We would then copy the 10 rows of equations and paste them creating 20 rows. After a few pasting of the copied rows, you'd have an array of a 100 rows, 200 rows, 400 rows, 800 rows, etc. The process would continue until the sheet was sufficiently filled.

Not a solution but a work around.

Regards,

When I use Autofill on formulae to copy them into empty rows I end up with little red triangles saying it isn't a valid formula. In Excel and Lotus 123 I can just use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to copy and paste into as many cells as I want, why not Numbers?

Are you serious? There isn't really a way to do this? I guess we should stick with Excel then... Too bad.

I know this is not very helpful, certainly not a solution, but if you zoom as far out as possible before you drag the bottom right corner, you can cover ground much more quickly. Sorry if this is overly obvious. It wasn't to my frustrated brain! Very lame this is an issue; seems terribly elementary.

Also, if you replicate an entry 10 times you can then cut that first group of cells and paste them, starting in the next empty cell down to get 20. Do that again and you can start covering ground pretty quickly before long.

Message was edited by: kennethdaniels

One last goofy work around before I hit the hay: I took my repeating value and put it into an empty Pages document followed by a hard return. I copy pasted that multiple times by simply holding down the Command V buttons for a minute. Then you Select All and Copy/Paste to get an even longer string (being careful not to leave a space where you left off). You can get into the thousands pretty quickly this way. Then just put the final paste into Numbers, once you've done one last Select All, of course.

I don't understand.
On my system it works flawlessly.
Of course, the autofill function correctly adjust the formulas if they are referencing other cells.
If you want to keep the cell's reference unmodified, you must use absolute references.

And remember that you may enter a formula in the header cell so it will replicate in the entire column (or row) as described in the Help and/or the User Guide

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE jeudi 13 septembre 2007 10:14:35)

I was just as astonished as everyone else that such a basic copy/paste-to-multiple-cells is not in Numbers! And there I was scratching my head and looking up Help and getting no help at all...

This program needs a LOT of upgrading. The speed is also dog-slow on my G4 PB with 768MB memory. Oh well... back to Excel for the time being till Numbers get upgraded.

It works fine here. You can't drag a diagonal though. You first select the cell withe the formula, then pick the lowerright corner and drag either horizontally or vertically. When done dragging you could then continue with your copyied row or column to move in the other direction.

Hope this helps. Cheers.

Same with Yvan Koening. I can see no problem.

Drag in one direction - down or across - but don't go diagonal. Once done you should drag in the other direction. Easy!

Or do things the old fashioned was as others suggested. Cut and paste but every now and again reselecting in order to double/quadruple progress.

A third alternative is to think outside the table! Break up your data into "views" or "tables" and group like tables into themed sheets. That's what Numbers was designed to do. It goes way beyond the old fashioned single massive row/column table paradigm.

Fordvw wrote:
I too have the same question and am astonished that you cannot past one cell into a range. Clearly, this make Numbers completely unusable for me. It really is absurd you can't have this basic functionality.

It's amazing how often I keep seeing this yet some people here keep defending Numbers as a "basic" spreadsheet. It forgoes simple, elementary functionality in favour of gimmicks like value steppers and sliders. These are cute, but of no use if I have no need of the whole application on account of it missing essential functions.

Apple seem to be obsessed with dumbing down their software. It's insulting, really.

I have the same problem.

I'm astonished that I can't paste into multiple selected cells, or an entire selected column. Pasting only into the first cell seems the wrongest (sure, wrongest) possible behavior. The autofill-via-drag is only helpful for a small spreadsheet, it's tedious for large spreadsheets and made worse by the sluggish scroll rate. You can't even use the normal selection tools (shift-click) for auto-fill to speed up the process.

Hello

It's really boring to read several times the same comments: +When I use Autofill on formulae to copy them into empty rows I end up with little red triangles saying it isn't a valid formula. In Excel and Lotus 123 I can just use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to copy and paste into as many cells as I want, why not Numbers?+

Here we are not Apple employees so you are loosing your time and also the time of all of us reading your posts.
Of course we may let them unread. But as old helpers, we always assume that when someone post something, it's to ask a question to which one of us may give a answer.
Your flames are perfectly useless.
If you wish that Apple take care of your opinion, go to "Provide Numbers Feedback" in the "Numbers" menu and describe your wishes.

Happily, one poster make me laugh when he wrote that "this anomaly is a long time one in iWork".

I really don't understand how an application which is in version 1.0 or 1.0.1 may contain a "long time" anomaly !!!!

And the only responce I may give to all of you is: *if you can't live with this feature, stay with E…l.*
*We will not miss you !!*

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE samedi 20 octobre 2007 19:47:45)

I found the really round about way to apply a formula to a whole row or column. It's on page 93 of the user guide. It's very non-obvious. Applying a formula to a row or column should be a simple menu option in the row/column contextual menu, not this, but here it is...

----------------------

*Applying a Formula Once to Cells in a Column or Row*

When a table has header cells, you can use them to quickly apply a formula to all the cells in a row or column. The values in the cells are recomputed using the formula. This formula is called a header formula.

*To apply a header formula to cells in a column or row:*
1 Select the header cell for the column or row.
2 Open the Formula Editor. For example, type the equal sign (=).
3 Type the formula you want to apply to each cell in the column or row.
For example, to assign values to the cells of column C that are five times greater than the corresponding cell in column B, you’d use the formula B*5 or B:B*5. The formula is duplicated in all the cells in the column or row. In this example, cell C4 would contain the value computed by using the formula B4*5.
4 Click the Accept button or press Return or Enter to save the formula.

-------------------

This replaces the header name with a blank field. It's ok to put the header field name back, you won't lose the formula. You have to be careful to only have the header cell selected and not be in edit mode when you hit "=" else it will only apply to that cell.