Microsoft Excel has some nice features that can save repetitive typing. One that people are familiar with is using a fill series for continuous cells. These are often common values or series such as numbers, dates and months. The same feature can be used for a creating custom series that you might use in the office or at home.

The first Microsoft Excel feature I valued was allowing the program to prefill cells for me. I could type January, grab the fill handle and extend the rest of the year. I didn't have to type February, March and so on. I then learned I could do things like create an appointment list by 30 minute intervals.

These lists work well, but sometimes you have a series that Excel doesn't recognize. For example, if you have a series of sales offices in Boston, Dallas, London, Madrid, and New York, Excel would not know they are a series and the next item should be Paris. The solution is to define a custom list in Excel with these values.

To create a Fill List in Microsoft Excel,

1. Type in the values for your list in Column A.

2. Highlight the items in your list.

3. From the Tools menu, selection Options

4. Click the Import button toward the lower part of the screen.

5. Your values should show under the List entries: section. Make any corrections.

6. Click OK.

To fill cells with your series,

1. Type your first value such as Boston into a cell

2. Click the cell so the border shows.

3. Move your mouse over lower right corner till the + appears

4. Left click and drag over the cells you want filled. You can go down or across.

As you drag the fill handle, you should see labels showing the series values.

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