Completing a cell with a single characte

This cannot be that difficult to do.

I am creating a form using Microsoft Excel and want to have particular cells autocomplete with a character (e.g. dash, period, pound sign, etc.). In the old days of Lotus 1-2-3, you did this by inserting the forward slash and then the character (I think. It's been a while). This combination does not work in Excel.

How do you do this in Excel?? Since in the development process I am constantly resizing the columns to meet my needs, having cells autocomplete keeps me from needing to add or subtract the designated character from the cell so it prints correctly. I actually want the character to fill the space and appear to be a continuous string of the character across a designated area. Using boarders is not an option since the cell (or cell group) will have a boarder around it.

Got an answer?? I can be reached by e-mail at laanderson@dwd.state.in.us or by phone at (317) 232-7183.