Extensive Googling is giving me the impression that what I want can’t be done, but I’m holding out hope there might be a way…
I’m currently working with a lot of spreadsheets where I want to fill in gaps by “drag-copying” rows, you know, where you select a range then use the plus icon on at the lower right. I want the data copied exactly in each row, but Excel “helpfully” insists on changing any cells that contain numbers to fit some pattern it perceives. So every time, I have to click the autofill button that pops up, which defaults to “fill series,” and select “copy cells.” And half the time, I’ll be working quickly and forget to do this, not noticing until later.
In my perfect world, I would like to change the default autofill selection to “copy cells,” and disable the autofill button altogether. I mean, really, Excel… if I want you to change the numbers, I’ll specify a formula!
I thought formatting all cells as text would take care of this, but alas, no.
Also, copying a row the ctrl-c way and pasting isn’t a good solution. I’m talking about entering a row of data, then copying it to fill in many more rows - the ctrl-c/v method would take longer than having to use the autofill button.
