In the last post we looked at creating Named Ranges, click here for a recap, or read on with me to find out how to use named ranges to refer to a constant value.

As we have seen in the previous example named ranges can be used to represent a range of cells, but they can also be used to refer to a constant value ( this is a value that does not change) for example this could be the sales tax on our widgets.

To use a named range, select the cell you want to hold the value, for exmaple cell D1, so go right ahead and open up a new Excel workbook and click in cell D1

Insert | Name | Define

In Names box enter a name for the constant value in our case let’s call is Widget_Sales_tax
In the Refers to box adjust the formula to refer to the constant value, let’s make it 17.5%
Click ok.

To test this, select any cell in the workbook try cell A1
type the following

=widget_sales_tax
when you press enter 17.5 should appear.

Go ahead and try it. To really turn up the volume on the named ranges for constant values, check out my post on named ranges in formulas right here.