Q: auto fill

Hi BurleyBob,

Apple now calls that "auto-complete text in cells". It's not in Numbers 3.0 but according to this support document will be brought back in one of the releases over the next six months.

Meanwhile ...

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.

See this workaround thread for this and other ways to work with Numbers 3.0.

SG

Thank you for this explanation, but I am simply appalled by what's going on at Apple. We are *really* now seeing what that passing of Steve Jobs has cost. First, it was a Safari that was completely unuseable until a recent, long awaited update. Now, it's an iWork suite that has been completely stripped of some its most important features. And we are told about this *after the fact*.

I'm going to semi-quote Mr Jobs: "THIS IS ****!"

DrG

Hi DrSFG,

If you want to give feedback to Apple perhaps in your menu you should go to Numbers > Provide Numbers Feedback.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with your assessment of Safari or the new iWork suite.  There's obviously room for improvement, and there probably will be improvements. But I don't think the new Pop-Up Menu functionality discussed here is a step backwards at all. It works really well in a cross-platform, multi-device environment whereas auto-complete is less than ideal in many situations.  In any case, auto-complete is being reintroduced.

SG

Yea, Pop-Ups!

There is a lengthy separate discussion on downgrading to the older version of Safari. Web sites would not work properly with the upgrade. I couldn't fill out a FedEx shipping document with that upgrade which is critical to my business!

Re: Numbers: when a program is improved it should *not* take away basic functionality in order to change it's ability to interact. So now the program interacts with other faces. What's the good of that if it now takes ten times longer to implement the program? So Apple is *eventually* reintroducing auto-complete. It never should have been removed, and even Apple is implying to stay with the old version. Apple should have made people aware of this before encouraging us to upgrade.

Those who prefer backward compatibility and adding new features while never eliminating old ones probably will be happier with the MS model.

SG

I actually find your response highly insulting. Listen, sonny, I've been using Apple computers since my first Apple //e in 1984. I started on the Macintosh line with the PowerBook Due 250. I've been through the highs and the incredible lows of Apple Computer. It's one thing the make hardware obsolete if it is supplanted by something that is easier and faster and more robust. It's another to make basic software functions disappear, that make it more *difficult* to use. The entire foundation behind Apple is to make it simple. You don't make it simple if now you have to start typing where you didn't have to type before. That, my friend is exactly something Microsoft *would* do and Steve Jobs would never have allowed. This new version of Numbers may make it easier to access your document in various places, but that is not where you spend most of your time. You spend it filling in cells, and that has been made more difficult to do.

You're correct. I've had my say. I shall say nothing further.

@Bob,

You're correct, of course regrding this not being the proper venue. The proper venue for complaints that Apple could do something about (and that Users cannot) is the Feedback channel (Provide Numbers Feedback, found in the Numbers menu in Numbers is one gateway).

@Doc

You've been at this almost as long as I have—started on an Apple ][+, bought an Apple //e, got into Macs with the 128k Macintosh, bought the Mac Plus when it came out.

Do Provide Numbers Feedback.

Regards,

Barry

No insult intended, of course. I think long-time Apple users (I'm one too) shouldn't be too surprised when backward compatibility is dropped. MS is much less likely to do that, and tends to keep as many old features as possible while adding new ones. It's a different design philosophy.

Excel with all its features still rules the roost in the old desktop and notebook realms (I use it often). But in mobile Numbers is by no means an also ran. And more and more people are spending more and more time in mobile. So I'm rooting for Apple and think it deserves more credit for the innovations in Numbers. The new Pop-up Menu implementation is great, both on the Mac and in iOS. With it there seems to me to be little reason to bemoan too much the temporary loss of auto-complete, which can be an efficient way to propagate data entry errors.

SG

Hi SG,

I support your Pop-Up Menu approach as a way of preventing 'Auto Complete' (or 'Auto Fill' ) from taking control of my data. As a long-time user of both Mac and MS, I have always turned 'Auto Complete' off. It is just too clever by half. I could give you long and boring anecdotes of how huge data files have been turned into garbage... but I won't.

Funding bodies are now refusing to support research projects that propose to use spreadsheets (as opposed to proper databases) to store data. Too easy for a novice to do a 'bad' Auto Complete or a 'bad' sort. The same could be said of financial records.

Regards,

Ian.