Fill down in Excel, but based on multiple values
Mr. Excel has the answer for pre-Ribbon versions of Excel. Below are instructions for Excel 2007. With foo/bar in column A and your data in column B:
- Select all of the data in column A, from top to bottom.
- Click on Home->Find & Select->Go To Special
- Click "Blanks" and hit "Ok". (At this point, all blanks in the column should be selected, and cell A2 should be the active cell.)
- Press "=", and then press up to select cell A1.
- Press CtrlEnter to copy the formula into all selected cells.
Optional Step 7: If you need only the values, copy the whole column and "Paste Special" just values over top.
To do it manually:
Add a column (B) between the foo-bar column (say A) and the number column (now C).
Formula in B1 is something like =A1, in B2 (and copied down to the end of the data) =if(A2="",B1,A2). Column B now has the foo-bars almost as you want them, but they are the result of formulae rather than text.
Copy column B and paste special it into column A as values.
You can now delete column B.
If you get the idea, it's probably quicker to do it than write down the description, but whether you would prefer a Python script or not will depend on the number of spreadsheets...