In this short screencast, I'm going to show you about Flash Fill: the advantages and disadvantages. Primarily, I'm going to highlight the disadvantages because this is going to set us up for the next couple of screencasts on using Text functions in Excel. So I'm over here in this Names file. I've also added some data here that's not in the Names file, just some random numbers separated by hyphens. I've got a bunch of names here, hypothetical names. Excel has a really nice Flash Fill tool. So if I wanted to extract into separate columns the last name and first name, I can just type in a couple of examples. So Apple, and then as I'm typing in Arnot for the second line, you see this hidden drop-down thing back here that is detecting, that's known as Flash Fill. So if you click on that, then it'll automatically Flash Fill those names down and you see it does a really good job of plucking out the last name. You can also go up here, there's these options and we can just accept the suggestions. So I'm going to go ahead and do that. So that's really nice. We can also do this with the first name. So I could type in a couple of examples and when I'm not even done typing that second one, it gives me the suggested list and then I can accept those suggestions. So that's really nice and really useful. The only problem with this; if we wanted to insert a row here and a new name, so this might be Sally Struthers, it's not automatically updating the table. Whenever you're making Excel files, you should think in terms of making the Excel workbook auto update or live calculation. So if we insert a person here, it's not automatically calculating. So you can always highlight a region here, if the Flash Fill tool does not show up like it's not showing up here, we can always go up here to data and then we can select Flash Fill here and it will automatically fill that in. So that's one way we can do it. Again, I can go here, Data tab, Flash Fill and it automatically does that. So let me show you a way that you'll learn more about in the coming screencast and that is how to make these formulas live, as in we want to make these Text functions. So here's one that's going to use something known as Left and the Find functions. Again, you'll learn this in the next screencast. But this uses a formula with two functions in Excel to automatically determine where that comma is and then it extracts the last name. We can do the same thing for the first name using three embedded functions here that you'll learn about in the Text functions screencasts coming up, but bottom line is it's automatically extracting the last name there. The nice thing about this, now we go in here and I insert a row and I put a new record in there, then it automatically updates that. Also at the end, I can put in a new name and it automatically fills in those formulas. It doesn't do that with the Flash Fill. Here's another example of where we could possibly use Flash Fill. I could start typing in 527. Maybe I want to extract the left part, the middle part, and the right part, and I can type in 51. You notice when I'm not even all the way through, its has these suggestions. So I can click there, I can go ahead and accept the suggestions. We can type in 232, 879. The Flash Fill tool from what I've experienced is not very consistent, so here it's not detecting that middle one 879. If that's not happening, again, you can highlight this row, go to Data, Flash Fill, and it does a pretty good job of recognizing that. Then we can finalize this with our last column and it's not detecting that either like it did in the first. So I'm going to highlight this and then go up here to Flash Fill and it does a pretty good job. But again, if I wanted to insert, so let's go ahead and insert by shifting cells down and I put in just a random part number here, then it doesn't automatically fill that in like it would if you use a Text function. You're going to learn about those Texts functions to do this in the coming screencast. In summary, you can certainly use the Flash Fill tool, but a lot of times it's not going to automatically update when you add items to your various tables.