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How to skip cells when dragging formula in Excel?

When working on an Excel worksheet, sometimes, you may want to skip every other or nth cells when dragging and applying a formula to other cells as below screenshot shown. How could you complete this task in Excel?


Skip cells when dragging formula with OFFSET and ROW functions

In Excel, with the combination of the OFFSET and ROW functions, you can create a formula to easily skip cells when dragging it in a column.

Enter or copy the following formula into a blank cell, and then drag the fill handle down to extract every other cell from the column A starting at the first cell until zeros are appeared as below screenshot shown:

=OFFSET($A$2,(ROW(C1)-1)*2,0)
Note: In this formula, A2 is the first cell of the data list from where to extract values.. The number 2 means to skip every second cells when dragging the formula. If you need to skip every third cells, please change the number to 3.

Tips: To get every other cell that starts from the second cell within the specific data range, please use this formula: =OFFSET($A$2,ROW(D1)*2-1,0), and then drag the fill handle down to get the results until zeros are appeared, see screenshot:

Skip cells when dragging formula with INDEX and ROWS functions

There is another formula which is created with the INDEX and ROWS functions may do you a favor, please do as this:

Copy or enter the below formula into a blank cell, and then drag the fill handle down to get every other cell which starts at the first cell until errors are appeared as below screenshot shown:

=INDEX($A$2:$A$13,ROWS($C$1:C1)*2-1)

Tips: To extract the values that starts from the second cell within the specific data range, please use the below formula: =INDEX($A$2:$A$13,ROWS($D$1:D1)*2)
Note: In the above formulas, the ROWS function returns the row number of every 2 cells, and the INDEX function locates the corresponding rows in the range $A$2:$A$13 and returns the values in the rows of the range.

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