Excel and Open Office have very similar features in the AutoComplete. This is to help you enter data quickly. This is different from the Appleworks Spreadsheet program. When you are entering data in a column, if AutoComplete is turned on, if you start typing something that looks as if you have entered it before, it will come up in a black box. Click on the black box and it will enter it for you.
This only seems to work for information in the columns, not not rows.
If you want to AutoFill in Open Office, say you are making a list of predictable titles, like the days of the week, you would type in the first one. Then click out of that cell, click again in that cell and a black box will show up around that cell. There is a small black box that shows on the lower right side of the box. Pull that box down as far as you want and it will "magically" fill in with a series.
The Microsoft Office has a similar feature, but the fill box doesn't show as clearly as in Open Office. When you hold down near the lower right side of the cell, it does change to a fill box.
