Infero Training – Business and Technical Courses

You may have noticed when typing into a column that if you start to enter some text that begins with the same letters as text that has been previously entered in that column, Excel completes the remaining characters for you. This feature is called AutoComplete.

It will not always work, for example, for entries that contain only dates or numbers.

If the first few characters that you type in a cell match an existing entry in that column, Excel automatically enters the remaining characters for you. Excel automatically completes only those entries that contain text or a combination of text and numbers. Entries that contain only numbers, dates, or times are not automatically completed.

You have the following choices:

• Accept a proposed entry by pressing ENTER (in this case the completed entry will match the pattern of uppercase and lowercase letters of the existing entry)
• Replace the automatically entered characters by ignoring the proposed entry and continue typing.
• Delete the automatically entered characters by pressing BACKSPACE.

However, if you find this feature is not useful, you can turn it off:

1. Click the Microsoft Office Button , and then click Excel Options.
2. Click Advanced, and then, under Editing options, clear or select the Enable AutoComplete for cell values check box and turn automatic completion of cell values on or off.