Many novice Excel users have difficulty distinguishing between the effect of dragging the contents of a cell and dragging the handle found at the bottom right of a cell containing a formula.

The figure below indicates the position that you should place your mouse when you want to highlight a group of cells. In the figure we have clicked near the middle of a cell and dragged down (holding the left button of the mouse down while you move the mouse pointer). 

Here we simply want to highlight a group of cells, perhaps prior to a copy or a 'clear contents'. You 'grab' the cell by (roughly) the middle of the base of the cell, hold the left button of the mouse down and drag (down or left, right or up). A group of cells is then selected.

If you look on the status line at the bottom of the spreadsheet, Excel communicates with you and tells you the range selected. If you choose to copy the range of cells (as an example), you are asked to select destination and press the enter key or paste. 

Dragging a handle

If you click on the 'handle' on the bottom right of the cell and drag down, then you will copy the contents of the cell downwards. 

The contents of the cell are copied. If a formula exists in the source cell (the one you selected originally), the cells under will also contain the formula.

Thus Excel gives a differing results when dragging, depending how (where) you grab the cell and whether or not the cell contains a formula or even a value which it recognizes as part of a series (like Monday or January).

More information may be found in our Excel course: Excel training in Adelaide South Australia - Distance Learning