Traditionally, people have either manually typed row numbers or used AutoFill function. Autofill is a great tool to use if you have already data or if you have a small number of rows to autofill manually.

Imagine a circumstance where you don’t already have data, and you want to Autofill a large number of rows, perhaps in the hundreds or even in the thousands.  Even Autofill would be a cumbersome.

Scenario:

In our example, there are 38 data rows that need to be entered.  (Again, this technique can be used to enter a much larger sequence of numbers, even if you don’t have data ahead of time).  The SEQUENCE function in Excel 365/2021 can be used to enter the sequence of numbers, without manually Autofilling down a column.  The starting cell is A2.

Syntax:  =SEQUENCE(rows,[Columns],[start],[step])

The arguments in the square brackets [ ] are optional, and may be omitted if you are doing just a count from 1, increasing just by 1.  If you want the numbering to start from different number other than 1 or incrementing by a larger number like 5s or 10s, you may use the last [step] argument (i.e. like counting by 5s or 10s).

 

 

 

 

Some data sets are very large, and numbering the rows is very valuable in retaining or returning to the original sequence of the data, when a person is sorting by multiple columns.  Simple and complex sorting is very essential in tracking data when performing analysis.  Complex sorting is used when sorting by multiple columns but also choosing which columns have priority.  Complex sorting is taught in Excel Level 2 Intermediate course at L&OD.