Wendy Tietz, CPA, Ph.D., is a professor of accounting at Kent State University in Kent.
See this short tutorial video for Windows users or this tutorial video for Mac users for a step-by-step overview of how to use Excel’s Flash Fill feature to automatically fill in data based on patterns that Excel detects. Note: If you have a large amount of data or there are a lot of similar values, you may have to type a few cells for Excel to detect the pattern. The keyboard shortcut for Mac is Ctrl+E, just as in the Windows version. In Excel for Mac, the keyboard shortcut is the only way to use Flash Fill. Flash Fill will populate your column based on the pattern it detects. Once you type the first and last name in the first cell, click in the next cell down.
There is also a keyboard shortcut for Flash Fill.
