Repeating Cell Contents

Julius is a former Lotus 1-2-3 user. He notes that in that program, if he presses the "\" key and follows it with anything, Lotus will repeat what he types to fill the entire cell. For example, if he types \12345, Lotus will show 123451234512345..., regardless of the width of the cell. Julius is wondering how to do the same in Excel.

There are a couple of ways you can do this one is with a formula, using the REPT worksheet function:

=REPT(12345,10)

This formula repeats the text "12345" ten times. This approach works well if you know exactly how many times you want to repeat the text, but not so well if you don't. This leads to the second approach, which is to use formatting for the cell. Follow these steps if you are using a version of Excel prior to Excel 2007:

1. Select the cell or cells you want to format.
2. Select Cells from the Format menu. Excel displays the Cells dialog box.
3. Make sure the Alignment tab is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.)
4. Using the Horizontal drop-down list, choose Fill.
5. Click OK.

If you are using Excel 2007, the steps are slightly different:

1. Select the cell or cells you want to format.
2. Make sure the Home tab of the ribbon is displayed.
3. Click the small arrow icon at the bottom-right of the Alignment group. Excel displays the Alignment tab of the Format Cells dialog box.
4. Using the Horizontal drop-down list, choose Fill.
5. Click OK.

The result is that the cell formatting in this way will repeat whatever it contains as many times as it can fit that result into the cell. If the cell is not wide enough to display even one occurrence of the result, then you will see the familiar #### markers. The cell will only display entire occurrences of the result, not partial occurrences. Thus, it will display "1234512345," but not "1234512345123."