To drag and drop in Excel, just make a selection and hover the mouse over the edge of the selection. When the cursor changes, you can drag the selection to a new location. With this method, drag and drop is equivalent to cut and paste. The content of selected cells is moved, and the selection you drag will completely overwrite the destination cells. You can hold down the shift key to drag and insert. The difference is that the cells you drag are inserted rather than pasted…they don’t overwrite existing cells. If you want to copy cells, instead of move them, hold down the control key in windows, and the option key on a Mac, while you drag. You’ll see the cursor change into a plus (+) symbol. When you release the mouse, a copy of the cells will be placed at the destination. Drag and drop is a really handy way to quickly reorganize rows and columns in a table. Just hold down the shift key to insert. Notice also that you can work with entire rows and columns. Also, with drag and drop, you can insert and copy at the same time. In Windows, use Control + Shift, and on a Mac, use Option + Shift. You can also drag a selection to another worksheet using Alt in Windows, and Command on a Mac. Drag and drop also works on objects, which is mostly useful when you want to duplicate objects that float above the grid. When you’re moving objects around on the worksheet, you can use the Alt key in Windows, and Command on a Mac to cause the object to snap to the cell grid. Once you have an object moving in a vertical or horizontal direction, you can hold down the shift key restrict movement to that plane. Finally, you can use drag and drop to copy entire worksheets. On windows, click and drag a worksheet with the Control key down. On a Mac, hold down the Option key. One nice advantage to using drag and drop to duplicate worksheets is that you can put the new worksheet anywhere you want.
Dave Bruns
Hi - I’m Dave Bruns, and I run Exceljet with my wife, Lisa. Our goal is to help you work faster in Excel. We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.
