Q: Updating numbers turned off the autofill function.  How do I turn it back on?

There are many features that are no longer supported in the newer version of Numbers, this is only one of them.

You can continue to use the older version - it should be in a folder named iWorks within your applications folder.  But there are complications:

1)  going back and forth betwen versions can cause problems

2)  Mavericks will default to opening the newer version

To open with the older version you must either:

a)  drag and drop the document onto the icon for the Numbers '09, or

b)  control-click the document and use the Open With dialogue, or

c)  open Numbers '09 first and use the Open dialogue to find your document

You can get around the above hassle by deleting the new version of Numbers from your system.  Mavericks will try to reinstall it.  So you must turn off auto-install.  At which point you will get a daily reminder that it is there waiting to be installed.  You can then log out of the App Store ... at which point you will not be told about any updates at all (so will need to remember to check periodically for system updates, etc.)

Hi sullinsdad,

If you frequently enter repeating values in a column and don't want to type the same text over and over again, note that Numbers 3 has an enhanced Pop-Up Menu functionality that in many sitiuations is a better choice than "auto-complete" since it helps prevent typos or capitalization inconsistencies from creeping in and messing up your data. It is also much more efficient than auto-complete in Numbers for iOS, should you ever want to sync your budget to an iPad or iPhone and do data entry there.

Pop-Up Menu is much enhanced over what it was in Numbers 2.3, and is easy to set up:

Select the whole column or range before formatting as Pop-Up Menu and your existing values in that column or range will pre-populate a menu automatically:

Then you can remove the values you don't want in the list, such as the column header (and possibly some previous spelling errors too!):

And after this easy one-time setup all you have to do thereafter is to choose from the pop-up list when you add rows:

See this post and this post for more details on how this handy feature has been enhanced in Numbers 3.0.

Should you ever want to take your Numbers with you and do data entry on an iPad or iPhone, in a touch interface you will probably find pop-ups are much more efficient than typing the first few letters of items. You can scroll with ease through a list of dozens of items to make a pick. Anybody using Numbers cross-platform should favor Pop-Up so they can use their documents efficiently for data input on the go, which can be a productivity booster.

See this thread for this and other workarounds for Numbers 3.0.

SG

P.S. If for some reason you don't like Pop-Up Menu, perhaps because you are dealing with hundreds of distinct values, note that according to this support document auto-complete is one of the features to be reintroduced in the next few months.