Drag the cell to create an array of Roman numbers

Question

I need to create an array of cells of roman numbers. So I placed my entry like this

cell A1: I
cell A2: II
cell A3: III
cell A4: IV

I selected the entries and dragged the corner down, hoping that Excel will recognize the entry and continue with numbering, as it would for any other cell formula duplication, but it didn't. I tried marking the cells as "numbers" as well, but no luck.

Is it possible?

Answer 1

Excel can't do this in its native state because with those characters it looks for patterns rather than a series.

Instead, do the numbering in standard numbers and next to those use the function =roman()

A  B
1  =roman(A1)
2  =roman(A2) 

Drag this down and it will convert them for you.

Then you can copy - paste special - values to keep only the roman numerals and delete all the other numbers.

Answer 2

Similar to Raystafarian, you might prefer the formula

=ROMAN(ROW($A1))

which you can enter straight into cell A1 and drag down.