Help with applying formulas to a whole column

Are you selecting the whole column or row (the letter or number on the outside of the table), or are you selecting the header cell by itself. You have to select the header cell itself, alone (which, of corse, must be turned on with the Inspector Pallet). I'd put up a screen shot, but I don't have a place to put it right now. Maybe someone else can?

I would like to take this discussion one step further. How does one execute what in excel would be a "fill down" or "fill right" command?...For example, to create a column that has say 1-50 as cell entries.

In the past I'd insert a number in a cell, then in the cell B1 have the formula (=A1+1). Then I'd select B1 to say Z1 and then do a fill down.

There must be a way to do this with numbers. Thanks in advance for any help.
Richard
'drinkin the Cupertino kool-aid for 25 yrs 😉

ah-ha, I found the answer to my question in the Numbers User manual pdf you can download here: http://www.apple.com/support/iwork/
and the truly awesome search that Preview can do in pdf's.

and it's SO easy!..almost embarrassingly so, Say you have the number 50 in cell A1. Select that cell. You will see a small circle in the bottom-right corner of the cell. Click and drag that down and all cells below will auto-fill with the number 50 (or a formula if you have that in a cell). Works in a fill-right direction too.

In my example I still have to insert the numeral 1 in cell A1, and the formula =A1+1 in cell B1. Then, I click and drag the circle of cell B1 down...

Kudos to the designers!
Richard

Hello

I don't understand why you have to download the PDF manual by itself.
It is available in the image disk that we get on the desktop when we download the iWork trial version.
In fact three apps containing the different localised versions are stored in a folder named "User Guide".

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE lundi 20 août 2007 17:36:23)

It's even easier than I thought (and in my haste I might have said B1 when I meant A2 in my previous post). The auto-fill will recognize patterns. place a "1" in A1 and a "2" in A2. Select the two cells and drag the circle and it will count for you. Here's the help file:
***************************************
Here are ways to autofill table cells:

To paste the content and fill of a cell into adjacent cells, select the cell and then drag the Fill handle in its lower right corner over the cells into which you want to paste. You can drag to the right to add values to adjacent cells in the same row, or you can drag down to add values to adjacent cells in the same column.
Any data, cell format, formula, or fill associated with the selected cell is pasted, but comments aren’t pasted.

If the selected cell contains no data, autofilling clears data from target cells.

You can also add values to cells based on value patterns. For example, if a cell contains a day of the week or a month, you can select the cell and then drag to the right or down to add the next day of the week or month to the adjacent cell.
To create new values based on numeric patterns, select two or more cells before dragging. For example, if two selected cells contain 1 and 2, the values 3 and 4 are added when you drag through the adjacent two cells. And if two selected cells contain 1 and 4, the values 7 and 10 are added when you drag through the adjacent two cells (values are incremented by 3).

Autofilling doesn’t set up an ongoing relationship among cells in the group. After autofilling, you can change the cells independently of each other.

Unfortunately, yes, you have to re-enter the column name.

Definitely seems like a bug to me. If it's only some kind of quickie autofill technique, than it shouldn't delete the column name. If it deletes the column name, than that implies that the column has a formula associated with it (that you can go back and edit), but it doesn't; only the non-header (or footer) cells retain a formula or data, which aren't linked together in any meaningful or useful way. Doubly odd considering that footer cells DO have formulas that stay put.

Personally, I'd like Numbers to do both: Have a column name that doesn't get obliterated by a column formula (or data fill) AND have a formula (or data fill) that remains linked to the entire column, that you can go back and edit. (For those of you with long memories, this is how Trapeze worked, a spreadsheet from the late 1980s, which Numbers seems to be trying to copy. Even cooler, Trapeze would even resize the output table to match the input or create a table of the right size based on your formula for it.)

Be sure and use the Feedback menu item in the Numbers menu and report this bug. They can't fix it, if they don't know it's broke.

A possible work around for your particular problem would be to fill the column with a formula that references a cell on a page you don't print and put the value you update their (ie a single-celled table called Number ofQuestions with the number "50" in it. Then fill the column with "=Number ofQuestions :: A". You can then title the column "Questions" and it will stay in place when update "Number ofQuesitons".)