When inserting a new column, you seem to want Excel to read your mind about which cells, of the new column are to be left blank, which should be copied from the adjacent column.
Yup. And why not? It ain't rocket science. For example:
TOTAL SALES
Fred Alice Jeff Mary
January 30 40 50 60
February 20 40 10 10
March 10 20 30 40
April 50 70 90 20
Total: 110 170 180 130
Where the "Total" row is a bunch of SUM functions. The sum functions are all identical except for their relative cell references, and I created them by putting one SUM under Fred and filling to the right.
If I insert a new "Marge" column between Jeff and Mary, how hard can it be for the program to automatically figure out that I want Marge's sales totaled up, too?
If, for example, I'd colored the April row green for spring, Excel is perfectly happy to copy that color definition into the inserted column. So why not the formula too?
It should be dead easy. The formulas are exactly adjacent, are identical, and their relative cell references line up. Excel is even smart enough to change the cell references in the Mary column so that they still give the correct total. I see no reason why it shouldn't automatically just fill in the formula in that row.
Sure, you can probably come up with an example where you wouldn't want to fill in the formula there. I think those situations would be in the minority, but even if it wasn't the default behavior, I'd still be happy with a secondary "Insert Column, fill any formulas" option on the menu.
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