Forum Discussion
Fill dates series of Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays with fill handle
I swear I remember this used to work. I've entered the following dates in Excel, which are consecutive Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. I've selected the six cells, and you used to could drag the fill handle and Excel would figure out the sequence you wanted, and would continue the series with Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Did they change something since I last did this? I know I can fill weekdays, etc. with a right drag, but that's not what this is. I've tried everything I can think of to do this easily. I guess I could use date codes and a formula, but it shouldn't have to be that hard.
12/12/2025
12/13/2025
12/14/2025
12/19/2025
12/20/2025
12/21/2025
6 Replies
in A2:
=SCAN( DATE(2025,12,11), SEQUENCE(21), LAMBDA(date,n, LET( nextDate, IF( n = 1, date, date +1 ), IF( WEEKDAY( nextDate ) > 4, nextDate, nextDate +4 ) ) ) )where DATE(2025,12,11) is your 1st Thursday and SEQUENCE(21) is the number of dates (21 here) you need to generate
Thank you for your reply. I haven't tried this, but I'm sure it will work. The problem is that I only need this for about a five-month span, so it was faster and easier to make a series for each of the three days, then cut, paste into a column and sort. I don't know when I might need to do this again. I'm just sure that this used to work, but it's something I don't have the need to do often, so I don't know when it might have stopped working. I remember because I used to teach an Excel class, and using the fill handle in various situations was something people always loved to learn and were amazed by, so that's why I feel so strongly it did work at one point.
You can achieve this by formula if you wish.
=LET(x,SEQUENCE(31,,DATE(2025,12,1)),FILTER(x,WEEKDAY(x)>=5))Thank you for your reply. I'm just sure there used to be an easier way to do this. I may never do this again, so I just created a weekly series for three days, then cut and pasted them into one column and sorted.
I don't know if that ever worked but there are a few options. As you mentioned you could create a formula but alternatively you could use 12/13, 12/14, 12/15 and 4 blank rows then drag down and that should give you the 3 days of interest separated by 4 blanks all the way down. Then while that column is still highlighted select 'Remove Duplicates' to get rid of all the blanks (except 1 which you can manually delete).
Unfortunately, that just gave me 12/15, 12/16, 12/17, then four blank rows, then 12/18, 12/19, 12/20 then four blank rows....etc., regardless of whether I just drug the handle or right drug and chose fill series. I got around it by using a column with two Fridays, one with two Saturdays, then two Sundays, filled that series to where I wanted it to stop, then cut and pasted everything into the bottom of the column and sorted by date, but what a pain. I'm just sure this used to work. But thanks for the reply.
