Of course it does, because the current area (remember? the area completely
surrounded by blanks) is A1:A2, AutoComplete only works within this area or
on the cell immediately following it (which would be A3).

Still want AutoComplete to work for cell A4? Then here is what you should
do: Type something into B3. Now your "ABC company" will come up as a
suggestion when you type "A" into A4.

You can easily test the area where AutoComplete works: Just enter
Ctrl+Shift+* . If you followed previous example and typed something into B3
and went back to A4, then Ctrl+Shift+* should select (highlight) the range
A1:B4. Column A within this selection is what AutoComplete uses. If you use
your original example and are in A4, nothing will be selected, if you are in
A3, then A1:A3 will be selected.

Cheers,

Joerg



"Jason" wrote in message
...
OK, maybe this example will help explain what is happening:
In A1 I enter "ABC company"
In A2 I enter "Widget Co"
In A3 I enter nothing (blank)
In A4 I type "A" and no suggestion is made for "ABC company"
If I go back up to A3 and type an "A", "ABC company" does appear as a
suggestion.


"Joerg" wrote:

I agree that this functionality (which I never use) is not self
explaining.
Still I'm not sure what you would like to change (an actual example
would
help). It think AutoComplete is meant to facilitate input in (correctly
layed out) data tables. It works only on single columns, since in data
tables each column represents a category and duplicate values per
category
are common. It would be strange if AutoComplete would propose values from
other columns (=other categories) since it is unlikely that such
proposals
would match the intended input.

Cheers,

Joerg

"Jason" wrote in message
...
It's a bit confusing for a novice, such as myself. But, you are
basically
saying that it is working correctly and there basically isn't anything
I
can
do to change it, right? ;)

"Joerg" wrote:

Here is what MS Help says:

-Excel completes an entry only when the insertion point is at the end
of
the
current cell contents.

-Excel bases the list of potential AutoComplete entries on the column
that
contains the active cell (active cell: The selected cell in which data
is
entered when you begin typing. Only one cell is active at a time. The
active
cell is bounded by a heavy border.). Entries that are repeated within
a
row
are not automatically completed

Means: Excel picks only values from the active column. If the adjacent
columns are empty or not only makes a difference if you have blank
cells
in
your active column. Entries in adjacent columns can thus close the gap
created by blank cells in your active column.

Example: If you have data in A1:A10 and you try to enter text into
A11,
the
texts in A1:A10 will considered (the current area = data area
*completely*
surrounded by blank cells, is A1:A10). If you now delete A5, only
texts
of
A5:A10 will be considered (your new current area is A5:A10) . Now
enter a
value into B5. This makes A1:B10 your new current area of which the
column
A1:A10 will be considered (=it works as in the first case, when you
had
no
empy cell in your active column).

I hope this makes sense.

Joerg





"Jason" wrote in message
...
Yes, that is how it should work. But, having an empty column seems
to
cause
that to not happen. I'm using Excel 2007 (Office 2007). I'm not
100%
sure
if this happened in earlier versions of Excel for me. But, it does
work
correctly as long as I don't have any spaces between columns...

Any suggestions?

"Joerg" wrote:

I can't see where Excel is not correct. It just waits with its
suggestion
until there is no ambiguity left. If the only text in your column
starting
with letter B is 'Blaa', then Excel offers 'Blaa' after entering
just
a
B.
If you have another entry in your list such as 'Blaa foo', Excel
waits
until
you have entered 'Blaa ' (with a trailing space) to offer 'Blaa
foo'.
Makes sense to me. The space has no effect the other data in the
column...at
least in Excel2003.

Joerg

"Jason" wrote in message
...
Help states: "completes text entries that you start to type in a
column
of
data ? if the first few letters that you type match an existing
entry
in
that
column."

But, if I have a single space between entries in the column,
excel
"forgets"
all of the data in the column and doesn't offer any suggetions.
Is
there
any
way to correct this?