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How do you autocomplete a cell with Exce

By laanderson ·
This cannot be that difficult to do.

I am creating a form using Microsoft Excel and want to have particular cells autocomplete with a character (e.g. dash, period, pound sign, etc.). In the old days of Lotus 1-2-3, you did this by inserting the forward slash and then the character (I think. It's been a while). This combination does not work in Excel.

How do you do this in Excel?? Since in the development process I am constantly resizing the columns to meet my needs, having cells autocomplete keeps me from needing to add or subtract the designated character from the cell so it prints correctly. I actually want the character to fill the space and appear to be a continuous string of the character across a designated area. Using boarders is not an option since the cell (or cell group) will have a boarder around it.

Got an answer?? I can be reached by e-mail at or by phone at (317) 232-7183.

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How do you autocomplete a cell with Exce

by SyscoKid In reply to How do you autocomplete a ...

1 On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Edit tab.

2 To allow automatic completion, select the Enable AutoComplete for cell values check box.

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

? To accept the proposed entry, press ENTER.

The completed entry exactly matches the pattern of uppercase and lowercase letters of the existing entries.

? To replace the automatically entered characters, continue typing.
? To delete the automatically entered characters, press BACKSPACE.

You can also select from a list of entries already in the column. To display the list, press ALT+DOWN ARROW to display the list, or right-click the cell, and then click Pick from List on the shortcut menu.

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How do you autocomplete a cell with Exce

by laanderson In reply to How do you autocomplete a ...

The problem is going across columns and requires the cell to automatically complete across it, no matter what the width is, with a designated character.

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