Tiny Bug? Excel

[Guest]

Hi. Think I may have found a tiny bug. Tried to find my way around the MS
site and even called a number listed to report a bug but they wanted to send
me to paid support.

I'm no pro so someone needs to verify.

-I selected 32 colums and 32 rows and resized the cells to 16x16 pixels.
-I started the rows like so

a1
b1
c1

etc and then dragged them to fill the series

a1 a2 a3 etc

all worked except 'q'

'q' repeated q1 q2 q3 q4 q1 q2 q3 q4 over and over. The only way to do it
was to fill in q5 and then drag to fill the series from there and the numbers
correctly increased by 1..

 

[Guest]

That is interesting behavior. For anyone interested in trying it out, the
cell formatting has nothing to do with it.

Put "a1" in cell A1 and then put "q1" in cell B1. Select A1:B1, grab the
fill handle and pull it to the right to Column Z. You will notice the a#
ascends to 26, while the q# cycles 1-4. Q seems to be the only letter A-Z
that produces this result. I also tested "aq1" and "qq1". They fill normally,
only the "q1-4" acts up.

If you begin the row with q5, or correct the second q1 to reflect q5 and
then pull it again, the fill works as you might expect. Strange...

Roy

 

[Ken Wright]

It may look strange if you do this in lowercase, but try it in uppercase and
maybe it becomes a bit more obvious as to maybe why it does this, eg instead
of

q1 q2 q3 q4 q1 q2 q3 q4

try

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

Can't say for sure but I would suspect that that is by design so that
Quarter points for yearly information can be laid out easily, eg

2005 2006
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 etc

I would guess that in general this kind of behaviour would be required far
more than what the OP was trying to do. As you say you can get past it by
simply putting the 5 in.

--
Regards
Ken....................... Microsoft MVP - Excel
Sys Spec - Win XP Pro / XL 97/00/02/03

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It's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission
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[Guest]

Thanks Ken,

I did not see that documented anywhere in the help file, but with functions
like YEARFRAC and QUARTILE, MS was clearly thinking about quartering things.
As for me, staying up till 5:00 AM EST last night, I was just not thinking
clearly!

Roy

 

[Ken Wright]

No idea if it is in the help files, and to be honest had never really
noticed it till the Op pointed it out, but it would make sense I think.

Regards
Ken.................

 

[Guest]

Thanks for solving the mysetery; not a big deal but figured I'd mention it in
case something unexpected was going on.

I would have been just as glad to fill everything with aa > az bb>bz etc but
wasn't sure if there was a way to do this. I was actually just creating a
512x512 grid to use as a bmp in a 3D app so I could see what part of a
texture was mapped where on a landscape. Numbering all those cells by hand in
the graphics program was too troublesome.

Thanks again,

Burt

 

[Ken Wright]

LOL - You'd struggle to build a 512x512 grid in Excel anyway.

512x256 will work though

Regards
Ken...............

 

[Guest]

This is AutoFill behavior, and is intentional. The Help topic "About Filling
In Data Based on Adjacent Cells" gives the overview of starting values and
resulting series. Among the examples is:
Initial Selection Extended Series
Qtr3 (or Q3 or Quarter3) Qtr4, Qtr1, Qtr2,...