Excel: Flash Fill Tool

Flash Fill

This tool in Excel automatically fills your data when it senses a pattern nearby row or column. For example, you have a data with names in A column and you want to separate the first name and last name in column B and C, you need to just type the first name in B column and select Flash Fill it automatically senses the data from column A and fills the data. The same way you go to column C and enter the last name and use Flash Fill, it senses the data from column A and auto-fills the data.

Every time you apply Flash Fill to your Excel worksheet at the backend to accomplish that, it merges millions of multiple small programs, sorts those program snippets utilizing machine-learning algorithms, and ascertains the flawless job. All these activities are done in milliseconds. Therefore delivering the output almost immediately.

Limitations of Flash Fill:

Flash Fill is a special tool, but it too has some restrictions. Below given are some limitations of this tool-

1. The Output of Flash Fill is static. Flash Fill results are static, which means they do not update automatically. Therefore, unlike Excel formulas, it won't affect the Flash Fill result if you make any modifications to the original data.
2. Flash Fill may fail to recognize a pattern or may give the wrong output. In some cases, Flash Fill may not deliver the expected output. It happens mostly when your data is organized or formatted differently.
3. Skips the cells that contain non-printable characters: If some cells of your original data contain spaces or other non-printable characters, Flash Fill ignores those cells.
4. It converts the numbers to alphanumeric strings: While using Flash Fill for numbers, please note that this tool converts your numbers to string values.