Autofill Shortcut in Google Sheets

Autofill is how you extend a pattern down a column or across a row without typing each value yourself. Give Sheets a couple of cells to learn from, then drag, and it continues the series.

It handles numbers, dates, weekday names, months, and formulas. The pattern detection is the whole point. Sheets reads what you started and finishes it.

There is no built-in keyboard shortcut for autofill on Windows or Mac. The fastest route is the fill handle, the tiny blue square at the bottom-right corner of a selected cell.

Is There a Keyboard Shortcut for Autofill in Google Sheets?

Autofill Keyboard Shortcut (Windows Windows)

No native keyboard shortcut on Windows. Use the fill handle below.

Autofill Keyboard Shortcut (Mac Mac)

No native keyboard shortcut on Mac. Use the fill handle below.

Neither Windows nor Mac has a key combo that triggers autofill. It’s a mouse action, and the fill handle is how you do it. The steps are walked through below.

One thing worth clearing up: autofill is not the same as Fill down (Ctrl+D). Fill down copies one source value or formula into the cells you’ve selected below it. Autofill reads the existing pattern and extrapolates new values. So if you type Jan, Feb and drag down, you get March through December. Ctrl+D would just give you Feb repeated.

How to Autofill in Google Sheets (Step by Step)

  1. Type the first two or three values of your pattern in adjacent cells. Something like 1, 2, 3 for numbers, or Monday, Tuesday for weekday names.
  2. Select those cells with the mouse so they’re highlighted as a range.
  3. Hover over the bottom-right corner of the selection. A small solid blue square appears. That’s the fill handle. The cursor turns into a crosshair when you’re on it.
  4. Click and hold, then drag down the column (or across the row) to the last cell you want filled.
  5. Release the mouse. Sheets fills the dragged range with the next values in the series.

A quick example. In A1 you type Jan. In A2 you type Feb. Select A1:A2. Grab the fill handle and drag down to A12. Releasing fills March through December across A3:A12.

Same trick with dates. Type 1-Jun-2026 and 8-Jun-2026, select both, drag down. Sheets recognises the seven-day step and continues every Monday from there.

Formulas behave the same way. A relative formula in B2 like =A2*1.1 will autofill down as =A3*1.1, =A4*1.1, and so on. This is the most common use of autofill in real spreadsheets.

Another Way to Autofill

If the cells to the left are already filled, there’s a faster move.

  • Select the source cell or range.
  • Double-click the fill handle.

Sheets autofills the pattern down the column until it hits the bottom of the data in the neighbouring column. No dragging required. Handy when you’ve added a calculated column to a long table.

This double-click trick only works when there’s adjacent data to anchor against. On an empty sheet, double-clicking the handle does nothing.

Things to Watch For

  • Single source = copy, not series. Dragging the handle from one cell repeats that value. To get a series you need at least two seed cells so Sheets can detect the step.
  • Sheets can guess wrong on complex patterns. Mixed text and numbers, or non-uniform date gaps, sometimes produce a result you didn’t expect. Spot-check the first few autofilled cells.
  • Drag direction matters. Pull down or right to extend forward. Pull up or left and Sheets extrapolates backward (e.g. dragging up from Mar, Apr gives you Feb, Jan).
  • The fill handle disappears at the edge of the visible area. If you can’t find the small blue square, scroll so the bottom-right of your selection is visible.
  • Smart Fill is different. The pop-up suggestion that asks “Autofill?” after you type a pattern in a new column is a related feature called Smart Fill, driven by Ctrl+Shift+Y. It can extract names, split text, and combine columns. Worth knowing but it’s a separate tool from the fill-handle autofill described here.

Google Sheets keyboard shortcuts

Related Google Sheets shortcuts: