Excel gives you lots of ways to enter data quickly. The less time you spend typing data, the more time you have to analyze and make decisions based on what the data tells you. One way Excel offers to help you enter data is that it recognizes whether the first few characters of the text you’re typing matches text from another cell in the same column; if the text matches, Excel offers to complete the rest of that text. If it’s the text you want, you can accept it and move on. If not, just keep typing. Do be aware that AutoComplete and Pick from a Drop-Down List won’t work if there’s a blank cell in the column above the active cell.

A similar way Excel simplifies data entry is by letting you pick the value for the active cell from a list of existing values in a column. That’s not that important for a small worksheet, but when you’re working with page after page of data, seeing a sorted list of possible values is a real help.