iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Add It Quick: Data-Entry Shortcuts

Let’s face it, typing row upon row of data into a spreadsheet can be dreary work, and time-consuming, too. To ease the pain, Numbers adds several time-savers to help fill your grid quickly, even suggesting entries when the program thinks it knows where you’re headed with a cell value. This section surveys those speedy shortcuts.

Auto-Completing Entries

Many spreadsheets repeat information from row to row. In a spreadsheet detailing course enrollment at the sidekick academy, for example, columns for department and class name will inevitably include repeated values in several rows. Typing the name of the required course “Enthusiastic Exclamations” for the 200th time would try even the most battle-hardened typist. Holy déjà vu!

Happily, Numbers takes note of these reruns and, when it looks like you might be typing a text value it’s already seen, the program offers to fill it in for you (only for text, though, not for numbers, dates, or times). Numbers does this by watching what you type, comparing it to previous entries in the same column, and when it recognizes the beginning of your entry, offers to auto-complete it, as shown in Figure 18-26. The suggested text appears highlighted after your insertion point. In Figure 18-26, for example, the insertion point is located after the “E” and Numbers suggests the remaining text “nthusiastic Exclamations” along with two other alternatives.

Figure 18-26. As soon as you start typing text into a cell, Numbers scans ...