There is no means of disabling word completion. Almost every single text entry in a cell flashes a distracting "suggestion" and then requires additional keystrokes to leave the word as typed. Often only a space is required, however if a previous entry had the word and a space plus another word, then it requires entering a character not in any of the previously remembered entries to break out of the word completion. Clicking in a different cell does not leave the text already entered into the cell, but automatically inserts the full word completion text, requiring the additional text to be deleted. This behaviour destroys any chance of touch typing efficiently and slows entry down by a factor of two or three times. In my case, LibreOffice Calc is rendendered unusable (through frustration) by this behaviour.
I re-installed OpenOffice.org and realized LibreOffice behaved the same way. When I used the OpenOffice.org Help system, it quickly located the relevant function to disable the problematic behaviour. Specifically, the option was under Tools->Cell Contents->AutoInput. This worked in LibreOffice exactly the same way and did result in the word completion being disabled. As a note, I did search the online LibreOffice help using "word completion" and several other things I thought of and no hints were provided in how to turn this off in Calc. So, I'm not sure if this is a user interface issue (because the same logical functionality is managed in different ways depending on whether Writer or Calc is used), or a documentation issue, but I do believe it remains a usability issue. As an example, there is a bug report from OpenSUSE that was the only reference I found to turning off word completion in Calc (all other references were for Writer), and nobody in that thread seems to have known about the "AutoInput" control: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=700415 As a final comment, the fact that it is an on/off flag in the actual menus seems a little bit of a UI overkill, implying that people are going to want to switch back and forth between word completion and not often (vs. putting it in the Tools->Options... menu). In general, I will either have it on for a document or off, but it's possible it should be a "quick access" feature if others use it often enough.
Thanks for new idea Use this option: Tools->Cell content->Auto input to disable auto-completion AFAIK currently impossible to set auto completion to specific area on sheet, only for all Calc simultaneously. IMHO it would be useful to set auto-completion to that area on sheet where it makes sense, and disable for all other cells. Please, describe ideas about improving auto-completion here
Noel Grandin <noelgrandin@gmail.com> changed status to NEW
*** Bug 126117 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Repro 6.4+. AutoInput is now in Tools->Auto input. But no way to edit it, as is possible in Writer via Word Completion that is a tab in AutoCorrect dialog. Note: please see keyboard shortcuts in Help link.
This old report had two issues. The first one is fixed by the commits to bug 142214. I am changing the summary to describe the second complaint: "When autocompletion suggests a string, the suggestion should be ignored when clicking outside the cell" Involving design team to ask, if the behaviour should actually be changed or not.
We now get the autocompletion only if there is one exact match. For example, A1="Hello" and A2="Helli" will not suggest anything in A3 after typing "Hell". However, if B1="Hello World" you get the full text in B2 for "He". There is no urgent need anymore since suggestions are much more tailored. Pressing any other character stops the autocompletion, escape or backspace doesn't. Meaning if B2 in the upper example should be just "Hello" one has to type the full word and press backspace. Not intuitive but I don't see how this can be done faster. The better solution for the whole feature is probably to show a small number of options in a dropdown and allow to pick one per cursor up/down. Would be inconvenient for users who enter distinct terms like "Blue" and "Yellow". Putting all together it's a WFM. Feel free to reopen.
Forgot to discuss the point of "clicking outside the cell". This works as a finalization of the input, otherwise every number requires confirmation per enter. Also going another direction than downward eg. per cursor right to the next adjacent cell, would be impossible.