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What happened to Flash Fill in Excel?

Back in Excel 2013, Flash Fill was added, a nifty way to join or separate a string from other cells by example.   If its seems to have disappeared from Excel 2016 for Windows, here’s how to get it back.

In Excel 2013, Flash Fill worked automatically.  Just typing the first example in a neighboring cell was enough to trigger Flash Fill and it would show the proposed changes.

But it doesn’t always work that way in Excel 2016 for Windows.   Sometimes the suggestions will appear but other times it doesn’t.  We’re not sure why but you can make Flash Fill work even if the automatic system doesn’t.

Turn on Automatic Flash Fill

The first thing to check is that automatic Flash Fill is on.  Go to Options | Advanced | Editing options | Automatically Flash Fill.

If all else fails ….

If Flash Fill doesn’t pop up as you’d like, it’s just a click away from several places.

On the Data tab …

And under Home | Editing

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