Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Repeating Cell Contents.
If you need to repeat cell contents within a cell, there are two ways that you can approach the task. The first is with a formula, using the REPT worksheet function:
=REPT(12345,10)
This formula repeats "12345" ten times. It is interesting that Excel allows the result of the REPT function to be used in numeric formulas, provided you are repeating numeric values. Consider the following:
=REPT(123,2)
This results in 123123 being displayed in a cell. (Let's say it is in cell A1.) You can then use a formula such as this:
=A1+7
The result is 123130, which means that Excel treats the result of REPT as a number, when it can. If you want to actually repeat text, then you need to enclose the first parameter within quote marks, such as the following:
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: 
=REPT("abcd",10)
Using the REPT function works well if you know exactly how many times you want to repeat the contents, but not so well if you don't. This leads to the second approach, which is to use formatting for the cell. Follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Alignment tab of the Format Cells dialog box.
The result is that the cell formatting in this way will repeat whatever it contains as many times as it can fit that result into the cell. If the cell is not wide enough to display even one occurrence of the result, then you will see the familiar #### markers. The cell will only display entire occurrences of the result, not partial occurrences. Thus, it will display "1234512345," but not "1234512345123." This means that you may end up with empty space at the right side of a cell if Excel cannot fit into the cell another full instance of what you are repeating.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (6171) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Repeating Cell Contents.
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2026-08-03 11:50:32
J. Woolley
Re. Figure 1 of the Tip, I think the Horizontal Fill feature works best when only 1 or 2 characters are repeated to fill the cell. Here are some examples (see Figure 1 below)
Figure 1.
2026-08-01 07:34:41
Philip
Actually, REPT() returns a text by default. Your argument should be text or a reference to text. If it's a number, Excel will make a text out of it. Just check the default alignment of the result of the formula (it aligns to the left, just like any text does).
The reason why you can add the result to a number, is because the arithmetic operators try to interpret any text data they get into numbers and if that's successful they will perform their calculation.
Try the same with the SUM() function, and you'll see the REPT() result gets ignored ... A way around that is to convert the REPT() result to a number explicitly (e.g. by using the double unary e.g. --REPT() or multiply the result with 1 using 1*REPT() ...)
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