We're all Excel addicts over here, make no mistake. Much as we like to poke fun at the green monster, we simply couldn't imagine being even remotely productive in office without those friendly cells staring back at us from the screen.

And if you, dear reader, are anything like us, we share a common trait. It saves us a lot of time, to be sure, but it can also be downright frustrating at times. I speak of, of course, our mutual loathing for mice.

I don't mean the squeaky real-life variety (although I don't mind admitting that I'm not the biggest fan in this case either), but the ones that move the cursor around on the screen. For a professional Excel user, lifting one's fingers off the keyboard in order to use the mouse while working on Excel is nothing short of anathema. Just not done.

And as I was saying, it works well enough most of the time. THis Excel tutorial is about one of the few times that it... didn't.

Have you ever had to auto-fill a series? Write 1,2,3 in a column and then autofill the remaining numbers up until 20? Of course you have had to - who hasn't?

And therefore, you also know how to go about doing it, right? Fill in a couple of seed values, select them, and point your mouse at the lower right corner, right where that extra little bulge is present, and then drag for as long as you like - yadda-yadda-yadda.

Ah, but the question-du-jour, obviously, is: how do you do this using your keyboard? And the answer had us stumped for a long, long time. An online search threw up not-very-convincing answers and it seemed as if we were going to have to use the mouse in this case, like it or not.

Ah, but never fear. Us intrepid Excel Everest explorers will stop at nothing to dig up an answer - even if it means accomplishing nothing else in our work day.

Presenting, therefore, the keyboard shortcut that comes to our rescue today:

ALT+H+F+I+S

Here's how it works... let's say you want it to extend 1,2,3 (shown above) to 10.

So, in the first instance, select the seed values, and extend the series out as long as you like.

Now hit the keys in the order shown above: ALT-H-F-I-S

A new pop-up box appears:

In which one simply needs to enter the incremental or step value, and the stop value - that is the value up until which point you want the series extended. Of course, it goes without saying that autofill works for ordinary series such as the one we have talked about here, or growth series, or date formats... or what have you - all can be completed using the keyboard shortcut we have spoek about here.

And there, that's it. Painfully obvious once you get the hang of it, of course, but for us addicts, a major problem solved!

Have any keyboard shortcuts of your own that you think the world doesn't know about? Share 'em with us!

Tips, Tricks, and Insights