Autofill bug?

[C. M.]

I think I might have found an autofill bug. You can't autofill a series
down closer than 2 cells above a row that has merged cells in the next
column to the right.

This also derails any applescripts (but without the error) that attempt
to autofill any cells immediately to the left of any merged cells. In
that case, for example, the error in Script Editor is that the range
doesn't understand the autofill message. Here's an AppleScript that
illustrates the problem:

tell application "Microsoft Excel"
make new workbook at end
merge range "B11:B13"
tell range "A1" of active sheet
set value to 1
end tell
tell range "A2" of active sheet
set value to 2
end tell
tell range "A1:A2" of active sheet
-- Change A9 to A10 in the destination range to watch this script choke:
autofill (range "A1:A2" of active sheet) destination (range "A1:A10"
of active sheet)
end tell
end tell

This error does not happen on Office 2004.

charlie

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I think I might have found an autofill bug. You can't autofill a series
down closer than 2 cells above a row that has merged cells in the next
column to the right.

I can reproduce this and have submitted it as a bug. You can use
Help/Feedback to do the same.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I think I might have found an autofill bug. You can't autofill a series
down closer than 2 cells above a row that has merged cells in the next
column to the right.

Oh, and BTW, you should never ever use merged cells. Not even once. They
are the spawn of the devil and nearly always cause more problems than
they're worth (even when they don't precipitate a bug

 

[C. M.]

Oh, and BTW, you should never ever use merged cells. Not even once. They
are the spawn of the devil

Hah, hah, you don't have to tell me.

However, I don't have much to say about how these spreadsheets are put
together, and trust me, merged cells are the least of it.

For my particular use, I was able to find a workaround by filling the
columns with a hard-coded set of numbers. All the rest of my
AppleScript works as expected, so I'm happy with that for now. Plus,
the AppleScript runs many times faster than the original VBA macro did
in Excel 2004, so that's just a bonus!

cheers,

charlie

P.S. -- Thanks for checking it out, I have already reported it via the
feedback page.