Turn Off Excel AutoComplete

I'm sure that anyone who works in MS Excel has noticed that it has a habit of trying to finish a piece of data for you.

Excel likes to think of that habit as helpful and it's called AutoComplete.

Well… I can admit that there are select times when it can be helpful but I've got to say that for the Excel work I do it gets to be a bit of a pain.

Sometimes I end up with data I never wanted because I didn't realize that Excel was trying to AutoComplete with something wasn't a match.

When you're in that situation the only thing you can wonder is how to prevent it from happening again.

Fortunately it's an easy fix, just a single setting in Excel's options and you're free of the problems AutoComplete can cause.

So, here's the plan:

First we need to get to the correct location in Excel's Options dialog box.

- In older versions of Excel you'll find it under the Tools menu, Options choice. From there we need the Edit tab.

- Excel 2007 users need to go to the Office Button and click the Excel Options button in the bottom right corner. From there we need to proceed to the Advanced Options category.

At this point everyone is looking to uncheck the "Enable AutoComplete for cell values" entry.

Once the checkbox is cleared click OK.

And that should do it. From now on you'll have only the data that was actually entered into each cell, no more of Excel's suggestions and no more incorrect data… well at least that we can contribute to AutoComplete's behavior.