Excel 2013: Let Flash Fill Do the Work! + Other Tips!

This short video shows you some very cool new features in Excel. We’ll highlight Excel Templates, show you how to accelerate data insertion via Flash Fill, and show you some Quick Data Analysis tools. The video is at the bottom of this post.

One of my new favorites is Flash Fill. Flash Fill is a great tool that intelligently helps you complete a set of data based on the contents of another set of cells. We’ll cover Flash Fill in the video, but this is another great example.

For example, in the below screenshot we want to reproduce the name information held in column H, but without the first names. We want to retain the title and the last name.

As we start complete this task in column I by typing, “Mr. Smith” and then move on to filling in “Ms. Christmas”, Flash Fill calculates the contents of the remaining cells in our table based on the contents in Column H.

In the example above pressing the Enter or Return key on your keyboard will populate the rest of column I as suggested by Flash Fill. In addition to the method above you can actively force a Flash Fill from your Home Tab.

Watch our great video to see Flash Fill in action. In our video we show you how to flash fill an email address field. You will also learn about Excel Template and other great Quick Data Analysis tools!