Eclipse Java Autocompletion Not Working
October 19th, 2006 by 
Robert Enyedi
One day, after starting Eclipse 3.2, I noticed astonished that the autocomplete feature for Java classes did not work anymore. On pressing Ctrl+Space the popup list did appear, but it was always empty. This was a time of great mourning, since autocomplete is one of the killer features of Eclipse.
So what was the problem? In the evening of the previous day I did some reorganizing on my computer and moved the Eclipse workspaces to another drive (my operating system being Windows XP). It seems that this alone made Eclipse to fail the autocompletion.
QUICK FIX: Create a new workspace on the new desired location and import the projects from the old workspace. Do not forget to check the “Copy projects into workspace” checkbox so that the projects get copied to the new workspace directory. From this point on autocomplete should be back on its feet.
Posted in Java, General | 
April 4th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Thanks, that helped!
July 17th, 2007 at 10:23 am
That helped me too.
Thanks!
July 17th, 2007 at 11:34 am
There is an easier way to do this:
Go Preferences>Java>Editor>Content Assist>Advanced
Make sure “Other Java Proposals” is ticked
July 25th, 2007 at 2:17 am
Thanks Phil, that also helps and it’s much easier (don’t need to set other properties again, eg. server settings).
Cheers,
Greg
October 1st, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Hey, run across the same sort of problem, where the autocomplete works for all the primitive and more common types (found, i suspect in the JDK things i downloaded last night), but NOT for custom classes. This can be a nightmare when there are many other people working on a project and there’s not enough time to drag oneself through all the code to find the correct method. Checked to see whether the Other Java Proposals are ticked. Any help would be appreciated!
Cheers!
October 25th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Hey Mark,
I had the same problem. My solution was to activate the proposals for types.
Like Phil said go Preferences>Java>Editor>Content Assist>Advanced and set the flag to “Type Proposals” too. This works fine for me. Maybee it will help you too.
Cheers, Joerg
January 3rd, 2008 at 12:05 am
Thanxs Phill. Resolved, but Eclipse su*ks anyway.
January 10th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I am running with the problem same as above, where autocomplete is not working. I tried with all the tips from above chain of mail. unfortunately non of them solved my problem. Any help will be really appreciated.
Thanks,
Deepak
January 21st, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Thank you very much, I had the same problem and first thought that it had something to do with Ubuntu/Gutsy. Very glad for this simple solution by changing the “Type Proposals” - flag.
Thanks,
Christoph
March 5th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Thank you Very,
I had the same problem and I just ticked the “Type Proposal” and “Other Java Proposals” and it works. Like they say “Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophisitcation”
March 27th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Thanks for the blog post. I was having the exact same problem.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
I had the same problem.
In addition, even the “organize imports” command did not work for custom classes.
The solutions proposed above did not solve my problem.
I just did a “close project”/”open project”. And it worked.
Eclipse reloads the classes index at this moment.
Note that “clean project…” doesn’t work.
I hope this is going to help someone.
July 1st, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Thanks, that quick-fixed my problem too.
August 5th, 2008 at 8:09 am
thanks .
Editor–> Advanced-> Content Assist –> Other Java proposal did the trick for me .
August 26th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Still helping people after 2 years. This fixed my auto-complete problems in Eclipse v3.4. I’m not sure how those got unchecked…
September 9th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
yay Phil thanks for your post, it worked for me!
I can’t work without content assist.
Quoting Phil:
—————————-
There is an easier way to do this:
Go Preferences>Java>Editor>Content Assist>Advanced
Make sure “Other Java Proposals” is ticked
September 15th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Hello , the content assist doesn’t show all the proper options that it must have :(
The only solution is to make a new Workspace
Regrads,
Vajahat Ali
Pakistan
October 10th, 2008 at 3:33 am
Two years on, and still good info. Cheers!
October 22nd, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Got same problem.
I upgraded to eclipse 3.4 (from 3.2) and opened up a workspace created using 3.2. Auto-completion was gone.
Tried “Preferences>Java>Editor>Content Assist>Advanced>Other Java Proposals” option, but it did not work.
Then I closed and re-opened the project, and it worked :-) :-).
Thanks to Phil and Nicolog.
November 13th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
raise your hands to thank Robert and Phil!
November 21st, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Phil, many thanks!
Why isn’t this enabled by default……
November 21st, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Editor–> Advanced-> Content Assist –> Other Java proposal worked well in my eclipse. thank you very much
November 24th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
thanks… quick and easy fix
many tks again!!
November 27th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Thanks.. I face this issue when I changed my laptop. I downloaded the Eclipse 3.2 and saw that auto help is not working. I was thinking plugins are missing.. but this page helped.. Thanks again to all