Best way to give a cell a "default value"?

[Jeff Heikkinen]

What is the best way to give a cell a default value? What I mean by
"default value" is that the cell should initially (when I first put
something on the same row, say) have a certain value, say a constant or
the same text I enter in some other cell on the same row, but I can
later manually type over it without screwing up a formula or anything.

For example, in the sheet I described in my other post from a few
minutes ago, suppose I want to add a column called "tree". The Tree
will be the same as the Name in most cases, so I would like Excel to
automatically put the name in the Tree column as soon as I enter it in
the Name column. But for some feats, the Tree will be different from
the name. More specifically, it will be the Name of a different feat,
one that is among the prerequisites for this Feat. I don't expect Excel
to automatically figure that out (if that was a big deal I'd probably
try to figure it out in Access rather than Excel), I'm okay with doing
it manually, but I would like it to automatically fill in the Tree
column for the vast majority of cases where I don't need to worry about
it.

 

[Frank Kabel]

Hi
if you really need a default value I see two options:
1. use an IF statement or a VLOOKUP formula and overwrite the result of
this formula if required
2. If you don't want to have a formula in the cells you'll need VBA
8use an event procedure)

 

[Jeff Heikkinen]

Frank Kabel, worshipped by llamas the world over, wrote...

Hi
if you really need a default value I see two options:
1. use an IF statement or a VLOOKUP formula and overwrite the result of
this formula if required
2. If you don't want to have a formula in the cells you'll need VBA
8use an event procedure)

Thanks much - was hoping to avoid VBA but that shouldn't be hard. Like
the other answer, just not a skill I've ever bothered to pick up but the
code I've seen you and others post doesn't look all that complicated
(I've programmed a little in the past, just not lately and not in VB).

Thanks for all the answers, BTW.