Automatic lists won't turn off

Question

I've read various threads on similar issues - while writing in Pages, or entering data in Numbers, the program will insert data for me that is incremental to what I desire. I believe this behavior is what is meant by the 'Automatically detect lists' preference, but unchecking that preference does NOT change the behavior.
While there may be times when I want the program to be smarter than I am, right now it's causing me grief when I don't notice that my carefully duplicated items are actually increasing in value, and I've kept merrily typing along and have to recheck all my data....
I've unchecked the 'Automatically detect lists' in both applications, then quit and relaunched - both still insist that an alternate phone number after [phone] must be (402) xxx-yyyy, and so on.
Is anyone else seeing this behavior, and managing to nip it in the bud?
Thanks
Bob Vennerbeck
Pages'09 v4.0.2
Numbers'09 v2.0.2
MacPro OS X 10.5.8

Answer 1

Bob Vennerbeck wrote:
Yvan - Thank you, but I tried unchecking the General Preference "Show auto-completion list in table columns" - that does NOT make any change in the behavior that I am seeing. It DOES turn off the pop-down list of previous similar entries, which is what I believe it is supposed to do. I have also unchecked the Auto-Correction sub-preference "Automatically detect lists", which seems more likely to be intended to control the behavior I want to stop....
The checkboxes are switchers they enable or disable the named feature given their status checked or unchecked.
In Numbers, I have a row of cells with a computer name that ends in a digit, then a serial number, then a date of purchase, then a room number, etc. - when I copy and paste that row, the data is stable, but if I select the row and drag down, all the items increment (the computer name increase by one, the date by one day, the room number by one,
This is the designed behavior described in Numbers User Guide.
If a string ends with a number, applying fill down increment it.
If you don't want this incrementation, copy paste once then apply fill down after selecting the two cells containing the same string.
In Pages, I have just typed my home phone, and want to add a work number, and it automagically pastes in and increments the area code between parentheses -
In Pages you are using Copy/Paste which changes nothing exactly as it does in Numbers.
If I understand well, you are comparing the behavior of the fill down feature to the Copy/Paste one.
Different features, different behaviors.
it's logical. Why offer two different features if they behave the same ?
Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 23 septembre 2009 19:09:42