Docs · guide

How to copy a formula in Excel, on Windows and on Mac

By Alberto Gulotta · Updated 26 September 2026 · 15 min read

To copy a formula in Excel down a column, select the cell that has it together with the cells below and press Ctrl+D on Windows or Cmd+D in Excel for Mac — or double-click the little marker at the cell’s bottom-right corner, which needs only the formula cell selected, no range. Along a row the key is Ctrl+R, or Cmd+R. Copying changes the relative references; moving the same formula does not.

1. Select the cell that already has the formula. It is the one cell that is right, and everything below follows from it.
2. Double-click that little marker at its bottom-right corner. Microsoft calls it the fill handle: double-click it “on the first cell that contains the formula” and Excel fills the column downwards on its own.
3. If you prefer the keyboard, select that cell and the cells below it together. Then press Ctrl+D on Windows, or Cmd+D in Excel for Mac. The selection matters: Fill Down copies “the topmost cell of a selected range into the cells below”, so the formula cell is the top of what you select. For a row, the key is Ctrl+R or Cmd+R and the selection runs sideways.
4. On Windows, if you prefer the ribbon, it is Home › Fill. Microsoft’s two lines are “Select the cell with the formula and the adjacent cells you want to fill” and “Select Home > Fill, and choose either Down, Right, Up, or Left”.
5. Check what the references did. A copied formula changes its relative references; a moved one does not. This is the step that decides whether the numbers below are right.
6. If nothing recalculates, check this setting first. Microsoft: “Formulas won’t recalculate when you fill cells if automatic workbook calculation isn’t enabled.” On a Mac the switch is Excel menu › Preferences › Calculation › Automatic; on Windows it is File › Options › Formulas › Workbook Calculation › Automatic.

Where the fill stops. Double-clicking the fill handle fills downwards on its own, and pryor.com suggests it for a long column: there is no range to select and nothing to drag. What it cannot do is guess how far you meant to go. Pryor, the one secondary source read for this page, describes the behaviour: the double-click “can copy the formula down as far as Excel finds data to the left”, and “the fill stops when Excel sees that you have no headers or data to the left”. So a gap in the neighbouring column ends the fill there, and the rows below stay empty. In that case a keyboard fill avoids the gap, because you select the last row yourself.

Where this answer stops. The Windows fill keys come from Microsoft’s Fill a formula down page, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V from the Windows section of its Keyboard shortcuts in Excel page, and the Mac keys from the Excel for Mac section of that same page and from Copy and paste a formula to another cell or worksheet in Excel for Mac: neither platform is assumed from the other, and the version list for each page is given beside it in the notes. The claims that are not Microsoft’s — where the double-click stops, and that it suits a long column — come from pryor.com and are attributed where they are made. Nothing here covers Excel on iPad, iPhone or Android, which Microsoft documents on a separate page with a different set of gestures, and nothing here covers Google Sheets. Nor does this page teach the formulas themselves — only what happens to one when it is copied.

Not covered here. It does not teach the formulas themselves, only what happens to one when it is copied, filled or moved.

It does not cover Excel on iPad, iPhone or Android, which Microsoft documents separately with its own gestures.

And it does not cover Google Sheets, or copying a formula between two different workbooks. What holds instead is simple: the keys and quoted sentences come from the Microsoft pages listed under Sources, each with the platform that page documents, except the two sentences and claims taken from pryor.com, which say so where they are made.