Chapter 2: Entering and Editing Worksheet Data
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If you find the AutoComplete feature distracting, you can turn it off by using the Advanced
tab of the Excel Options dialog box. Remove the check mark from the Enable AutoComplete
for Cell Values box.Forcing text to appear on a new line within a cell
If you have lengthy text in a cell, you can force Excel to display it in multiple lines within
the cell: press Alt+Enter to start a new line in a cell.When you add a line break, Excel automatically changes the cell’s format to Wrap Text. But
unlike normal text wrap, your manual line break forces Excel to break the text at a specific
place within the text, which gives you more precise control over the appearance of the text
than if you rely on automatic text wrapping.To remove a manual line break, edit the cell and press Delete when the insertion point is located at the end of the
line that contains the manual line break. You won’t see any symbol to indicate the position of the manual line break,
but the text that follows it will move up when the line break is deleted.
Using AutoCorrect for shorthand data entry
You can use the AutoCorrect feature to create shortcuts for commonly used words or
phrases. For example, if you work for a company named Consolidated Data Processing
Corporation, you can create an AutoCorrect entry for an abbreviation, such as cdp. Then,
whenever you type cdp and take an action to trigger AutoCorrect (such as typing a space,
pressing Enter, or selecting a different cell), Excel automatically changes the text to
Consolidated Data Processing Corporation.Excel includes quite a few built-in AutoCorrect terms (mostly to correct common misspell-
ings), and you can add your own. To set up your custom AutoCorrect entries, access the
Excel Options dialog box (choose File ➪ Options) and click the Proofing tab. Then click the
AutoCorrect Options button to display the AutoCorrect dialog box. In the dialog box, click
the AutoCorrect tab, check the Replace Text as You Type option, and then enter your cus-
tom entries. (Figure 2.6 shows an example.) You can set up as many custom entries as you
like. Just be careful not to use an abbreviation that might appear normally in your text.Excel shares your AutoCorrect list with other Microsoft Office applications. For example, any AutoCorrect entries you
created in Word also work in Excel.