Microsoft Excel: Can you enter a formula that will add one cell to another in a pattern w/o going cell by cell

Question

I am completely new to Excel, and I'm trying to teach myself the basics. I have a book to guide me, but I'm finding I just find more questions than answers. So here goes...

I'm trying to write a basic spreadsheet with a few different columns to figure out how much money I'll earn by working different hours of overtime. For example, I have a column marked "Total Hours Worked," then "Total Gross," "Estimate of Taxes Taken Out," and "Total Paid." I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to set a formula for the first column. For example, the first entry would be 40 hours, then I want to go up in .25 increments up to 60 hours. Is there a way I can enter a formula somewhere to have Excel do it for me? Or do I have to enter the numbers line by line. It just seems so repetitive, I feel like I'm missing a shortcut.

Thanks!

Answer 1

What you need to do is to enter the formula into one cell. When this is done, click on the cell and you will see a small square on the lower right corner of the cell, drag it to whatever cells you want it to apply to.

Answer 2

This is how I did it. I created a column with the increments starting at .25. After the third one that I put in by hand, I highlighted the group and dragged down, thus creating the series. That is column a
column b, i started with 40 hours, at the cell location b2 .
at b3 i wrote the formula. =$b$2+a2. Using the dollar signs make that cell a constant, it does not change. Then I copied that down the column. as you do that a2 changes to a3 to a4, carrying the increments down.
good luck!

Answer 3

Sure, you can do this
In A3 type 40
In C1 type 0.25
now in B3, paste this
=$A3 + $A3 * C$1
Then, copy and paste this cell down to get the values

This is my first exam to my students here

Afte all, I am the VBAXLMan