Tell Excel To Leave My HSA Alone!

HSA = Health Savings Account

Since Excel 2000 Microsoft has been trying to dumb excel down (IMHO) to make spreadsheet work easier for more people. In doing so they try to have the program think for the user and help them do basic tasks. Most of the move in this direction took a giant leap forward in Excel 2007 and continues in Excel 2010. Side Note: I am please to have my “file” menu back in Excel 2010.

With Excel trying to think for me, it would like to help me out and turn my HSA abbreviation into “has”. This is quite annoying when you really do not want to put H.S.A. on your spreadsheet. Most of your end users know that HSA is an abbreviation so why make your column widths bigger for 6 characters when 3 will do?

To remedy this problem simply go to (in excel 2010) File -> Options -> Proofing -> Auto Correct Options -> and delete hsa to has autocorrection. Voila! Now you can get your work done.