Understanding AutoComplete

Excel includes a handy timesaving feature called AutoComplete. This feature can save you time when you are entering lots of similar information in a column. You may already have noticed this feature before—when you start to type something in a cell, Excel tries to guess what you are typing and shows a "match" that you can accept simply by pressing Enter.

The "matches" that Excel uses in its "guess" are nothing but the contents of the cells in the column above where you are making your entry. For instance, if you have information in cells A1 through A6 and you are entering a value in cell A7, Excel looks at what you are typing. If the first few characters uniquely match something in any of the six cells previously entered in the column, then Excel offers to AutoComplete A7 with the contents of the cell that matched.

Excel only tries to match your new entry with immediately adjacent cells above the one in which you are entering the information. It stops trying to match entries when a blank cell is reached. For instance, suppose you have information in cells A1 through A14 and A16 through A23. When you start typing an entry in cell A24, Excel only tries to match it with values in A16 through A23; the blank cell at A15 halts the comparisons.

In addition, Excel does not try to match with cells that contain only numbers, dates, or times. The cells must contain either text or a combination of text and numbers.

For some people, AutoComplete can be annoying rather than timesaving. If you want to turn off the AutoComplete feature, follow these steps:

1. Display the Excel Options dialog box. (In Excel 2007 click the Office button and then click Excel Options. In later versions of Excel display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. At the left side of the dialog box click Advanced. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The advanced options of the Excel Options dialog box.

3. Clear the check box named Enable AutoComplete for Cell Values.
4. Click on OK.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (6262) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Understanding AutoComplete.