Excel Automatic Data Type: Dog Breeds and Diseases

Posted on: 07/11/2020

Excel's Automatic Data Types is an awesome feature. There are over 50 different data Automatic data types, not including the specific types listed when you go to Data - Data Types group. Excel's Automatic data types can recognize similar data. In this video, I type in different dog breeds in columns A and Excel finds the breeds and returns data information.

Just some of the fields for dog breeds:

AKC recognition year
alternate names description
female maximum height
female maximum weight
female mean height
female mean weight
female minimum height
female minimum weight
hair length image
male maximum height
male maximum weight
male mean height
male mean weight
origin
shedding
size

Other Automatic Data Types include:

artwork, book, music act, music work, music album, musical instrument
plant, animal species, dog breed, cat breed, Fictional characters, dinosaur, cattle breed, goat breed, pig breed, pigeon breed, poultry breed, sheep breed, animal anatomical structure, yoga pose, yoga position, yoga sequence, yoga prop, pilates exercise, physical activity

The Automatic Data type is one of the newer data types in Excel and is currently only available for beta users. It will work on Excel for Microsoft 365, Excel for Microsoft 365 for the Mac, and Excel for the web.

Video Time Stamps

Timestamps/Bookmarks
0:00 Intro
0:25 dollar-cost averaging
1:25 Dog breeds
3:07 Diseases

I used Automatic Data Type to identify diseases

Type in the diseases in column A.
Click in one cell that has the diseases. Make a table using CTRL + T.
Select the diseases. In my example, I selected A2 to A5.
Click the Data tab. In the Data tab group select Automatic.
Now add the fields you want.

Note: #FIELD! error message means the record doesn't have any data for that particular field. Here is a Microsoft article on #FIELD! error message.

Chris Menard's free course on Excel tables:

Ten reasons to use Tables in Excel - free course

Microsoft support article for linked data types:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-linked-data-types-are-available-in-excel-6510ab58-52f6-4368-ba0f-6a76c0190772?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US