So in summary i'm entering name initials in a column, and excel appears to be calculating the rest of the coloumn for me, but then deletes it all again. Like a kind of autofill thing. How do I actually make use of this I can't figure it out.
In a bit more detail, in column A i have 'Firstname Lastname'. I then go down column B and enter the first two letters of the firstname, then the first letter of the second name. This creates a unique 3 letter identifier for each employee which I can use for various other functionality in the report. For example John Smith would be JOS.
As i'm going down the list, every now and again it appears to calculate the rest of the column for me, however it only lasts a second before disappearing again even if i dont press anything. It appears as a sort of greyed out font, and I can't reproduce the action on purpose.
First of all i'm a little shocked it's managed to figure out what i'm doing and been able to fill in the rest of the column by itself. However, I have no idea how to leverage this in a useful manner.
Is there a name for this functionality? and how do I get it to actually fill in the cells rather than it appearing to be some sort of autofill suggestion that i can't access.
Thanks
Ben
In a bit more detail, in column A i have 'Firstname Lastname'. I then go down column B and enter the first two letters of the firstname, then the first letter of the second name. This creates a unique 3 letter identifier for each employee which I can use for various other functionality in the report. For example John Smith would be JOS.
As i'm going down the list, every now and again it appears to calculate the rest of the column for me, however it only lasts a second before disappearing again even if i dont press anything. It appears as a sort of greyed out font, and I can't reproduce the action on purpose.
First of all i'm a little shocked it's managed to figure out what i'm doing and been able to fill in the rest of the column by itself. However, I have no idea how to leverage this in a useful manner.
Is there a name for this functionality? and how do I get it to actually fill in the cells rather than it appearing to be some sort of autofill suggestion that i can't access.
Thanks
Ben
