In Excel 2013 and later, there has been a significant push towards “intelligent computing”. Flashfill is one of the most significant new features under this push. See video below.
Previously, if you want to parse a telephone number, you need to know a few text processing functions. But now, Excel can rightly guess what you are trying to do, and do it for you!
I think we are going to see more such useful functions in Excel…
PS. Curiously this super-useful feature can only be found in the PC version of Excel. Mac Users will have to wait a little longer – Since Microsoft has clearly indicated that it wants to unify Office products into one consistent experience across all types of devices, it is rather hopeful that Excel for Mac will soon be identical to its big brother for PC.