How to Use Flash Fill in Excel

In: BlogDate: Apr 06, 2020By: Claire Lickman

Flash Fill is one of the best tools in Excel - but not many people know about it! This feature is available from Excel 2013 onwards.

Learn how it works in this two-minute video.

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How to use Flash Fill in Excel

 

With Flash Fill, Excel can combine the information in two columns for you, or pull out a specific piece of text out of the middle of a cell for you. But you have to train it first.

For example, if you have title, first name and surname in three columns, but want to create a cell with all this information combined, add a fourth column. Type the data into the top cell in this new column and move down into the cell below, as in Nicky's example above. Then, press CTRL + E and Excel will auto complete the rest for you!

Don't confuse this with Autofill - learn about this great time-saving tool in our blog here.

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Claire Lickman

Claire is Head of Marketing at Happy. She has worked at Happy since 2016, and is responsible for Happy's marketing strategy, website, social media and more. Claire first heard about Happy in 2012 when she attended a mix of IT and personal development courses. These courses were life-changing and she has been a fan of Happy ever since. She has a personal blog at lecari.co.uk.

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