I'm relative new to Excel having just used it as a lined sheet of paper for listing things.

I'm trying to develop an Excel spreadsheet for tracking my car's mileage. Thus far I'm using a basic sheet with 4 columns - designated A=date, B=Miles travelled, C= Gallons used, and D= the computed MPG when B is divided by C.

Is there anyway to enter a formula that will do that to each row automatically, without me having to enter for column D, each row, the formula "=b2/c2" and "b3/c3", and "b4/c4", and so on.. Thus far, all I can figure out is that I have to type in the formula for each row.

Also, I'd like to have a side display that keeps an easily-viewed running tally of two values, the lowest MPG and highest MPG values.

Does anyone know how this can be done relatively easily?

If you select a cell, and hold the mouse over the bottom right corner of the cell, the cursor changes to a black "+". Depress the left mouse button and drag that formula into adjacent cells. You can drag it completely down a column, for example. When you release the mouse button, the formula will be copied to each cell, but the references will advance as you wish.

If you wish a fixed cell in a formula, highlight the fixed cell in the formlua and hit the F4 key. For example, let's say you highlightec a "B2". The "B2" will change to "$B$2" (fixed cell). Hit F4 again, it will change to "B$2" (fixed column), then to "$B2" (fixed row), and finally back to "B2".

For the column at the side, you'll have to generate sums of the gasoline used and the miles traveled and use that in a formula. There is a summation formula "=Sum(A1.A255)".

Thanks Perito, The highlighting and dragging worked! Appreciate it very much.

I'm not understanding the "fixed cell" thing. What would the "fixed" cell or column be used for? Could it be somewhere in a range of cells and not disrupt the counting of the cells?

Also, the formula for the side display, I understand the "=" and "SUM" entries, but I'm not sure I understand the rest. Is the "(" ")" (parenthesis symbols) always required in formula entries, and, is that separation by the period symbol the way to express a range of rows; i.e. "A1" then a "." (period), then the ending limit "A255"? I think I remember seeing a colon ":" between column/row identifications somewhere? Are the colons used for something?

Thanks so much for your help.

The quotes are just his way of stressing cell references here in the forum. You only use quotes in Excel formulas to indicate the text in between is text.

Go here and start reading:

Excel Tutorial

Microsoft Excel Tutorial 2003/2002

Introduction to Excel 2003