Weird question on filling in typing in excel

[bwall]

I have a question about fill in cells in excel kind of like a list or a combo box. I have someome that wants to be able to start typing in excel and have the rest of the characters popup like the url address does in IE. I don't think that this is possible in excel, but I could be wrong because I'm not that familiar with it. I would think that it would have to be backed up by a database for this to work. Could someone help me on this one. I would like to initially do it with out a DB behind it. I have ID#'s and Client names that I would like to popup into the cells after typing a few of the numbers/letters. Is this possible in Excel??
Thanks
Bob

[Dave Peterson]

Maybe...

Excel has an option to use the adjacent (in the same column) entries.

You can toggle that option via:
tools|Options|edit tab|check Enable autocomplete for cell values

Because this uses the previous entries in the column, it'll get smarter each
time you another unique item.

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The other option is to use a combobox from the control toolbox toolbar. This
does support that kind of feature.

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Another option if the id's and client names are unique:

Type in the id, then use =vlookup() to return the client name.

You'd have to build a table of id's and client names (on a separate sheet) and
once you build that table, you could use Data|validation to allow the user to
pick the id (but not the autocomplete stuff).

If you want to read more about =vlookup(), visit Debra Dalgleish's site:
http://www.contextures.com/xlFunctions02.html

More about Data|Validation??
http://www.contextures.com/xlDataVal01.html

bwall wrote:
>
> I have a question about fill in cells in excel kind of like a list or a
> combo box. I have someome that wants to be able to start typing in
> excel and have the rest of the characters popup like the url address
> does in IE. I don't think that this is possible in excel, but I could
> be wrong because I'm not that familiar with it. I would think that it
> would have to be backed up by a database for this to work. Could
> someone help me on this one. I would like to initially do it with out
> a DB behind it. I have ID#'s and Client names that I would like to
> popup into the cells after typing a few of the numbers/letters. Is
> this possible in Excel??
> Thanks
> Bob
>
> --
> bwall
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> bwall's Profile: http://www.excelforum.com/member.php...o&userid=26997
> View this thread: http://www.excelforum.com/showthread...hreadid=402012

--

Dave Peterson

[bwall]

Thanks for the Reply!
I'm looking at the dataValidation link you posted and you other comments, I just noticed this reply now. I posted this question that is a better explanation of what I needed to do. I will look over you answers to my question. THANKS.

I have question about autocompleting cells with information. i wanted to initially use access for this, but ther person that needs this insists that he wants to use excel.

When he fills out his sheets he wants to have the cell autocomplete the rest of the ID # and the name when he starts to type in a cell.

I was wondering if this could be done by loading a sort of client information sheet, worksheet, whatever with the client id # and name. Then have a dropdown box or combo box to pull the client id information from the sheet were it is kept. The same being done with the name (possibly just auto completing name with the correct id number is entered or vice versa).
I have imported the table from access into an excel file. I started all these tasks in access before I heard that excel was preferred.

I have some other cells were I used the data validation in excel to load a dropdown list of options to fill the cell. This is ok for these few cells, but more clients may be added to the client sheet and I would like to be able to add them to the client sheet and have them fill into the dropdown for the client ID and client name on the report sheets that I have laid out that are spoken of above.

Is there a simple way or a way to perform these actions of loading and pulling info from another sheet that has the client id and number so that it doesn't have to be typed in everytime on the sheet that the paper reports are put into.

I don't want to get into any crazy coding, because I think that this could be done without all this in access.

[bwall]

Ok I figured out the using two worksheets and naming a range in the namebox and loading into dataValidation from Data on the menu bar. =rangeName in the source.

Is there a way to set the combobox and dropdowns as the other sheets grows? It seems that I missing that setting.