Q: Lists

Roger,

That feature, Autocompletion list in a table column, wasn't included in the Numbers 3.0 rewrite. In a recent KB article, Apple indicates that they will reinstate that feature in an update that they hope to release sometime in the next six months, along with some other missing features.

Hopefully you can put up with the problem for that long. If not, there have been workarounds proposed here in the discussions and there is always the option to revert to Numbers  2.3 until you are satisfied with the updates to Numbers 3.x.

Jerry

Hi Roger,

You don't have to just sit and wait and "put up with the problem." There are enhanced features in Numbers 3.0 that may fit your needs almost as well, and in many situations even better.

Until Apple reintroduces "autocomplete text in cells" sometime within the next six months (and even after it is brought back) you should consider formatting the cells in the column as Pop-Up Menu if you frequently enter repeating values in a column and don't want to type the same text over and over again.

In many situations, particularly if you are worried about typos, Pop-Up Menu has clear advantages over "autocomplete" anyway.  It is much enhanced over what it was in Numbers 2.3, and is very easy to set up:

Select the whole column before formatting as Pop-Up Menu and your existing values in that column 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 for more details on how this handy feature has been enhanced in Numbers 3.0.

In Numbers 3.0 there is no keyboard shortcut to activate the menu such as hitting the spacebar in the old Numbers (hope they'll add one in upcoming versions) but the Pop-Up Menu approach means 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 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.

See this thread for this and other workarounds for Numbers 3.0, this thread for features gained in Numbers 3.0 and this thread for features lost.

SG