Q: latest version of numbers does not auto complete as you enter text into a spread sheet. how do you turn this feature on.

Hi barborch,

That behavior, called "autocomplete text in cells", has disappeared from Numbers 3.0 but Apple says it will reintroduced it sometime within the next six months.

Meanwhile, If you frequently enter repeating values in a column and there aren't too many different values you could consider formating the cells in the column as Pop-Up Menu:

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

Then you 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:

There's no keyboard shortcut to activate the menu such as they had in the old Numbers (hope they'll add one) but the Pop-Up Menu approach has some advantages over autocompletion: no spelling errors 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 typing the first few letters of items.

SG

it only attaches to those cells which already have entries. New entries have no pop-up.  I can't seem to fill that pop-up down the column for new entries

Hi barborch,

Generally the most efficient way to use Numbers tables (you may be doing this already) is to define the first row as a Header Row. Then, generally, you don't want blank rows in the body of the table, and you might want a Footer Row at the bottom.

To make sure the Pop-Up Menu format applies to the entire column (and thus automatically to new entries), select the entire column (in the example above I clicked on the A so you see the selection outline around the entire column) and then formatted via Cell>Pop-Up Menu.  That way any new rows added at the bottom of the table will automatically have Pop-Up Menu format in that column.

You can extend Pop-Up Menu formatting manually to new cells by selecting cells already formatted the way you want, extending the selection to the new cells and changing the Data Format from "Multiple" to "Pop-Up Menu."

SG