MS-Excel / Functions and Formula

Advantages to Naming Cells and Ranges

Using names for cells and ranges offers the following advantages:

  • A meaningful range name (such as Income) is much easier to remember than a range address (such as A1:A21).
  • After you select a named cell or range, its name appears in the name box.
  • You can quickly move to a named area of your worksheet by choosing a name in the name box.
  • Creating formulas is easier, because you can paste a cell or range name into a formula.
  • Names make your formulas more understandable and easier to use. For example, =Income-Taxes is more intuitive than =D20-D40.

Although Excel is flexible about the names that you can define, it does have the following rules:

  • Names must begin with a letter or the underscore character (_).
  • Names can't contain any spaces. You may want to use an underscore or a period character to simulate a space (such as Annual_Total or Annual.Total).
  • You can use any combination of letters and numbers, but the name must not begin with a number (such as 3rdQuarter) or look like a cell reference (such as Q3).
  • You can't use most symbols. You can, however, use the underscore (_), period (.), backslash (\), and question mark (?).
  • Names can be no more than 255 characters long.
[Contents] [Next]

In this tutorial:


  1. Using Ranges names for formulas
  2. Advantages to Naming Cells and Ranges
  3. Introducing Ranges Names
  4. Defining Range Name
  5. Editing Ranges Names
  6. Managing Range Names
  7. Creating a Name from a Selection
  8. Creating a Dynamic Range
  9. Working with Range and Cell Names
  10. Using Names in Formulas
  11. Intersection Operators with Names
  12. Applying Names to Existing Formula
  13. Naming Constants and Formulas
  14. Excel Maintains Cell and Range Names