Excel Flash Fill - Getting Started with 4 Awesome Examples

Flash Fill is one of my favorite Excel features. In this getting started tutorial, we will look at four examples of how powerful Flash Fill is. We will also look at Excel options if Flash Fill is not automatically working. The keyboard shortcut for Flash Fill is CTRL + E. That works on both PCs and Macs.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:30 Flash fill example 1
1:22 Flash fill example 2
2:20 Flash fill example 3
3:18 Flash Fill options
4:01 Flash fill example 4

Flash Fill options are located on File - Options - Advanced - Automatically Flash Fill.

Flash Fill videos by Chris Menard

And make sure you subscribe to my channel!

-- EQUIPMENT USED ---------------------------------

-- SOFTWARE USED ---------------------------------

DISCLAIMER: Links included in this description might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links I provide, I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you! Thank you for supporting my channel, so I can continue to provide you with free content each week!

[roywilson]

Great video as always. I find flashfill useful only in static data. In data that is regularly added to it is not so useful and I tend to use a more traditional formula solution that can be replicated down or will automatically fill in a table or, depending on the needs, use Power Query to clean the data.

[markwood]

Hey Chris great short video as usual 😊. Perhaps you could do something with cross hair fill and why results sometimes are not as expected. My example is I have a tracker SS that I update at intervals with a new row of information. I put my field data (meter reading) in the first column in the next available row. I then want to calculate the cost and volume of fuel, in this case, used since the last meter read. I highlight the data used in the calculation in the row above and drag it down to the new row using the cross hair fill function. The issue is some of the columns copy down like for like while others increment by +1 on the original value. The question is why do different columns behave differently in the single copy. A table as you might suggest is not a solution. I usually use the little helper icon that appears in the bottom right hand corner of the drag and select the copy option the correct any that have incremented. Thanks.

[Adriaan.J.L]

Is there a way you could give Excel like example values, Excel detects a pattern, and then give you a formula that you can copy down?

[JoseMartinez-mnvl]

Hi Chris, what is the keyboard shortcut to highlight a range of cells in a column when it includes blank cells? Currently, I use Ctrl + Shift + down arrow but it stops at each blank cell.