Q: Numbers version3  seems to have lost the capacity to guess my text entry in a column i.e. if in a column i have words such as house and home as soon as i start to type h into a new cell, numbers used to guess the words house or home. how can I restore it

Hi filfromgbr,

That feature is not in Numbers 3.0. Apple has announced they will be restoring it in upcoming releases over the next six months. It's called "Auto-complete text in cells."

SG

Meanwhile, you could consider formatting the column where you frequently enter repeating values as Pop-up Menu. In some ways it's a better approach:

If you frequently enter repeating values in a column you could consider formating the cells as Pop-Up Menu:

If you've selected the whole column before formatting as Pop-Up Menu, your existing values in that column will pre-populate a menu automatically:

Then you remove the values you don't want in the menu, such as the column header (and quite possibly some previous spelling and capitalization inconsistencies too!):

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

That's all there is to it!

There's no keyboard shortcut to activate the menu such as they had in the old Numbers (I hope they'll add one) but the Pop-Up Menu approach has some advantages over autocompletion: no spelling inconsistencies or lack of capitalization when there should be capitalization, etc.

And should you ever want to take your Numbers with you, in a touch interface pop-ups are more efficient than activating a virtual keyboard and tapping the first few letters of items.

See this thread for other workarounds for features not included in Numbers 3.0.

SG

Hi fil,

Autocomplete (the feature to guess what you mean when typing) has gone in Numbers 3.0.

You can send feedback to Apple if you think this feature should be restored (Numbers Menu > Provide Numbers Feedback).

SGIII has come up with a workaround solution. You can view it (and other workarounds) here at

https://discussions.apple.com/message/23622372#23622372#

Scroll down to the fourth message for SG's workaround.

Regards,

Ian.

Hi SG,

I see your reply was posted two minutes before mine. Another example of great minds thinking alike!

Regards,

Ian.

I see your reply was posted two minutes before mine. Another example of great minds thinking alike!

Hi Ian,

Not sure about the great minds part. Not quite the full quid here.

SG

Thank you guys I like the pop-up menu approach and indeed it is actually very elegant solution and take few second to do. thanks again

filippo

Hi filippo,

Glad it helped. When I tried it I was surprised how easy it was to set up a pre-populated pop-up menu. Lots of features in Numbers (new and old) that aren't that well documented, it seems.

SG