Add Autonumbering to your MS Excel Spreadsheet

Dennis Faas's picture

Autonumbering will advance your numbered rows and keep them current, even if you should delete or add a row.

Unfortunately, MS Excel does not ship with an autonumbering feature (like that found in MS Access), that increments a number each time you add a new row. In Excel 2003 and 2007 however, you can use the Row function to add your own autonumbering to a list.

Say you want to create a list of all of your school's classes and their corresponding learning materials.

Follow the steps below to add autonumbering to the list:

  1. In A1, enter the formula below:
     
  2. =TEXT(Row(A1),"000-000")
     
  3. Enter the name of the first class in B1.
     
  4. Enter the learning material of the first class in C1.
     
  5. Copy cell A1 to A2.
     
  6. Enter the name of the second class in B2.
     
  7. Enter the learning material of the second class in C2.
     
  8. Select A1:C2.
     
  9. Go to Data | List and select Create List.
     
  10. In Excel 2007, press CTRL + T and then click OK.

Notice, that when you type the name of the next class in B3 and press Tab, MS Excel will automatically provide the next number for you.

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