How To Use Flash Fill In Excel

Relax, let the software do the work

Trying to fill out cells in Excel that incorporate text or data from multiple other cells in a sheet can be a very time consuming process. This is especially true if there are hundreds or thousands of rows in the spreadsheet.

Once you know how to use Flash Fill in Excel correctly, you can let Excel do all of the heavy lifting. You just provide a couple of manual cell entries to help Excel understand exactly what you’re trying to do. Then, Excel does the rest of the work for the rest of the spreadsheet.

If this sounds like a time-saving tip you’d like to try, let’s take a look at how you can use this feature to improve your own productivity.

Note: The Flash Fill feature in Excel is only available in Excel 2013 and later.

How To Use Flash Fill In Excel

The simplest application of Flash Fill in Excel iscombining two words together. In the example below, we’ll show you how to use Flash Fill to quickly combine a first name and a last name into a third cell for the full name.

In this example, column C contains the first name, column D contains the last name, and column E is the column for the full name.

As you can see, the Flash Fill feature can save a tremendous amount of time if you compare manually typing one cell and Enter to having to manually type the names for all of the cells in the new column.

If you’ve noticed that the Flash Fill feature doesn’t work, you need to turn on the Flash Fill feature in Excel. You can see how to do that in the last section of this article.

Excel Flash Fill Options

When you perform the Flash Fill steps above, you’ll notice a small icon will appear next to the filled-in cells. If you select the drop-down arrow to the right of this icon, you’ll see some additional options you can use with the Flash Fill feature.

Using the Flash Fill options in this drop-down box, you can:

Once you select Accept suggestions, you’ll see that the “select” numbers for the “changed cells” will drop to zero. This is because once you accept the changes, those cell contents are no longer considered “changed” by the Flash Fill feature.

How To Enable Flash Fill In Excel

If you’ve noticed that Excel doesn’t provide a Flash Fill preview when you start typing the second cell, you may need to enable the feature.

To do this:

SelectFile>Options>Advanced. Scroll down to theEditing optionssection and make sure bothEnable AutoComplete for cell valuesandAutomatically Flash Fillare selected.

SelectOKto finish. Now, the next time you start typing in the second cell after filling in the first, Excel should detect the pattern and provide you with a preview for how it thinks you want to fill in the rest of the cells in the column.

You can also activate the Flash Fill feature for the cell you have highlighted by selecting the Flash Fill icon in theDatamenu under theData Toolsgroup in the ribbon.

You can also use it by pressing Ctrl + E on the keyboard.

When To Use Flash Fill In Excel

Concatenating full names from two columns is a simple example of how you can use Flash Fill in Excel, but there are many more advanced uses for this powerful feature.

Keep in mind that, however useful the Flash Fill feature is, it will not automatically update when you change the original cells.

For example, in the first and last name example in the first section of this article, you could achieve the same output by using theConcatenate functionand then filling the rest of the column with that function.

=CONCATENATE(C2,” “,D2)

When you do this, if either of the first two cells change, the Full Name will update. One drawback of this is that if you delete either of the first two columns, the Full Name column will clear or display an error.

This is why the Flash Fill function in Excel is best used when you want to fully and permanently convert the original columns into a newly formatted string or number.

Ryan has been writing how-to and other technology-based articles online since 2007. He has a BSc degree in Electrical Engineering and he’s worked 13 years in automation engineering, 5 years in IT, and now is an Apps Engineer.Read Ryan’s Full Bio

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