Here is a quick Excel tip to kick start your week.
Sometimes, we want to enter same data in to several cells. You can use CTRL+Enter to do this in a snap.
- Select all the cells where you want to enter the same data.
- Type the data
- Press CTRL+Enter
- Done!
See the animation aside to understand how this works.
Using CTRL+Enter to fill blanks with same value
We can use this technique to fill all the blank cells too.
- Select all the cells, Press F5
- Select “Special”
- Select “Blanks” to select all blank cells
- Now type whatever you want
- Press CTRL+Enter
- Done!
See this demo to understand this technique.

That is all for now. I have a lot of work to do since we are re-opening VBA classes this Wednesday (11th Jan). See ya.
Do you use CTRL+Enter? Share your tips & uses?
I use CTRL+Enter often when I need to fill in the same value in multiple places. What about you? Do you use this? How do you use it? Please share using comments.
Some more awesome Excel tips for you:
- Quickly Fill Blank Cells in a Table
- Quick Comparison of Data using Row Differences
- Delete Blank Rows in Excel
- More Excel Quick Tips

















8 Responses to “Introducing PHD Sparkline Maker – Dead Simple way to Create Excel Sparklines”
This looks like it could be very useful for a project I'm putting together right now, thank you so much. Quick & silly question, how do I copy & paste the sparkline as a picture?
Question answered. For anyone else:
Select chart>Hold Shift key & select Edit/Copy Picture>Paste
[...] more information about PHD Sparkline Maker, please read this article and to learn more about Sparklines, read this article from Microsoft Excel 2010 blog. Also there [...]
Am I right in thinking that the y-axis is set automatically by excel?
That makes it possible to get the column chart not to start at zero.
Andy - yes, it is currently set to 'auto', which defaults to a zero base for positive values, but you can change that by left-clicking the chart, then choosing (in Excel 2007):
"Chart Tools/Layout/Axes/Primary Vertical Axis/More Primary Vertical Axis Options"
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: When manually editing a chart's minimum/maximum axis values, PLEASE be sure there's a valid reason and that doing so won't skew the message shown by the data (e.g. by exaggerating differences). If in doubt, go back and read Tufte. (W.W.T.D.?)
[...] gridlines, axis, legend, titles, labels etc.) and resize it so that it fits nicely in a cell [example]. This is the easiest and cleanest way to get sparklines in earlier versions of excel. However this [...]
thanks for the work creating the template!!!!
looks good