When you have a list or database in Excel, you might want to include a column showing the row numbers. Excel offers a couple different ways of doing this, but the best of all is to use the ROW function. By doing so your row numbers will change dynamically when you add new records to the list.
The exercise and result are in the attached file.
Three ways of putting in row numbers are:
Printing the row numbers in the printout. Go to the File Menu, select Page Setup, then click the Sheet. Click the option to print row and column headings. The drawback with this is- you also print the column headings. In addition, what if you do not want the header to be a row number.
Use the Fill feature in Excel. Enter a column for the row number. Enter in 1 for the first row in the list. Then while still in the cell with the first row number, hold down the Ctrl key and drag down the Fill handle (the crosshair (plus sign) you see when you put the cursor over the bottom right of the cell) to the bottom of the list. The drawback with this is that you have to redo this every time you add or delete an item from the list, i.e. it is not dynamic.
Use the Row function. This is dynamic and will change automatically when you add or delete an item from the list.
The ROW function is very simply: =ROW()
Suppose we do this for the first row in a list.
Notice that problem when we do not want to include the header row? It shows the first row in the list as row 2.
Fortunately, there is a quick fix. Change the formula to =ROW() - 1.
Now the list starts with 1. The formula is set and you can copy it to the end of the list.
Add or delete any items to the list and you can see how the rows automatically adjust.
You could adjust the formula in other ways, such as if you wanted the first item to begin with 1001.
If you never expect the list to change, using the FILL feature can work fine. The safer way to go though, is to use the ROW function.