Page 118 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

100 Data Entry 101
To turn on this feature, click the Automatically Insert a Decimal Point check box in the Editing Options section of the Advanced tab of the Excel Options dialog box (Alt+FTA) to put a check mark in it. When you do this, the Places text box immediately below it determines the number of decimal places
that the program is to add to each number entry. You can then specify the number of places by changing its value (2 is, of course, the default) either by entering a new value or selecting one with its spinner buttons.
After turning on the Automatically Insert a Decimal Point option, Excel adds a decimal point to the number of places that you specified to every numeric data entry that you make at the time you complete its entry. For example, if you type the digits 56789 in a cell, Excel changes this to 567.89 at the time you complete the entry.
Note that when this feature is turned on and you want to enter a number without a decimal point, you need to type a period at the end of the value. For example, if you want to enter the number 56789 in a cell and not have Excel change it to 567.89, you need to type
56789.
Ending the number in a period prevents Excel from adding its own decimal point to the value when Fixed Decimal Places is turned on. Of course, you need to turn this feature off after you finish making the group of entries that require the same number of decimal places. To do this, deselect the Automatically Insert a Decimal Point check box on the Advanced tab of the Excel Options dialog box (Alt+FTA).
You AutoFill it in
Few Excel features are more helpful than the AutoFill feature, which enables you to fill out a series of entries in a data table or list — all by entering only the first item in the series in the spreadsheet. You can sometimes use the AutoFill feature to quickly input row and column headings for a new data table or to number the records in a data list. For example, when you need
a row of column headings that list the 12 months for a sales table, you can enter January or Jan. in the first column and then have AutoFill input the other 11 months for you in the cells in columns to the right. Likewise, when you need to create a column of row headings at the start of a table with suc- cessive part numbers that start at L505-120 and proceed to L505-128, you enter L505-120 in the first row and then use AutoFill to copy the part num- bers down to L505-128 in the cells below.