Flash Fill - Wrong Pattern for Filling Month Names

Silver Contributor

Hi all,

 

This is what the Flash Fill suggests to fill the full month names!

Flash Fill - Wrong Pattern.png

 

 

It should be smart in this regard to recognizes this simple pattern!
What do you think?

6 Replies
The opposite would work (extract first 3 characters). There has to be some pattern.

Or type January then double click on the corner of the fill handle to create list of full months.

I see what you're saying but I don't think it's unexpected behaviour

Yes, that's expected behaviour and that's why I prefer not to use Flash Fill on relatively big ranges - you always have to check if it found correct pattern for all data.

@Haytham Amairah 

In that particular case don't use Flash Fill but Auto Fill.

 

@Wyn Hopkins @Sergei Baklan @Detlef Lewin 

 

Thank you all!

 

By the way, I also noticed the same behavior in Power Query!

Add Column From Examples.png

yep they're based on the same technology, but at least Power Query tells you the forrmula it's writing which is much safer. As Sergei says, I don't trust FlashFill further than a I can see.