Autofill columns

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

In my spreadsheet I have columns for:

Fname, Lname, wk_phone, Fax_phone

I would like these rows auto filled when I begin to type the firstname. They
also need to be kept seperate because different fields are used in mail merge
documents.

I am a novice at this.
 
Relo --

Sorry, but I don't understand. Where is the data from which you'll pull to
autofill the columns? Or do you want to type in the first few letters of a
name and have it complete the cell? Or do you want to put in the last name,
and have it suggest the first and the phone number, etc.
 
I would like to type the first few letters and have it complete the next few
cells. These would be names,phone etc that appear many times in my spread
sheet.
 
Relo --

A couple of things to try:

1) For textual data, Excel automatically starts filling in from the entries
already created in the column (unless you turn this feature off at
Tools>Options>Edit>Enable AutoComplete). So just start creating the list,
Click to expand...
and you'll see it start to autofill from entries previously made. This
approach doesn't work with numeric data, however, so:

2) If you right-click on the blank cell, it will create a list of
previously-entered items in that column, including numeric data, from which
you can choose.

3) The 3rd option is I think what you're looking for -- VLOOKUP. Depending
on thesize of the group of which you're keeping track, you could just put in
the first name, or the last, and it would automatically look up the other
info. There's a lot written about VLOOKUP (or HLOOKUP). Basically, you'd
create a table, probably on another page, iwth all the data you'd want to
look up. The index data (what you'd use to search the table with) is either
on the left (for VLOOKUP) or on top (for HLOOKUP). It might look like:

FName LName Phone
Jane Doe 555-1212
John Smith 555-2121
Richard Black 555-2211
etc.

It would be best to create a named range of this data, perhaps called
'People".

In the data you're now capturing, a simplified version would be:
A B
1 First Last
2 Richard =VLOOKUP(A2,People,2)

HTH
 
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