tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-06:301081 Darkoshi Darkoshi 2011-09-05T02:57:31Z tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-06:301081:318542 2011-09-03T16:12:41Z 2011-09-05T02:57:31Z public 0 The Excel auto-complete feature sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. I've figured out some of the reasons why.<br /><br />Auto-complete can be enabled or disabled in Excel's Options, under Advanced - Editing options. There is a checkbox for "Enable AutoComplete for cell values" which is selected by default.<br /><br />With Auto-Complete enabled, when you type into a cell characters that match a previous entry in the same column, Excel will auto-complete the rest of the entry so that you can simply tab out without typing it all.<br /><br />But sometimes, Auto-Complete doesn't work.<br /><br />At first I thought it was related to there being any blank cells in the column above. If you fill each blank cell with a single period character, then sometimes Auto-complete starts working again, for lower cells. However, sometimes Auto-complete works fine, even when there are blank cells right above the cell you are typing! The explanation is that blank cells on their own don't interrupt Auto-Complete, but that a completely blank *row* does interrupt it.<br /><br />In another situation, Auto-complete wasn't working, even when what I typed exactly matched the value in the cell right above it. This was due to my having set the column format to "Numeric". I had done that since the first 20 or so columns had numbers in them. Once I set the column formatting back to "General", then auto-complete started working again.<br /><br />In another situation, Auto-complete stopped working, but after closing Excel and then reopening the spreadsheet, it worked again.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=darkoshi&ditemid=318542" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments