Within Excel you can use the labels of column and rows to refer to the cells contained within the range of columns and rows, OR you can create
names to represent cells a range of cells, formulas or constant values.

Let’s take a closer look at naming a range of cells.
Usually the name box on the Formula bar only displays the active cell reference, it does have another use and this is the define and select named ranges.

The name is simply a text label given to one or more ( a range) of cells on an Excel worksheet.

For example Widget_Sales could be give to a single cell which contains the yearly total of widget sales or it could refer to a whole list of individual sales reps figures.

Here’s how to name a range, there are actually two ways to carry out this on Excel.

The first one is creating a named range using the Formula Bar
Select Cell Or Group Of Cells | Click On Name Box | Enter name

(NB a couple of conditions/restrictions apply to these names,
1- they can be up to 255 characters long
2- they must start with either a letter or an underscore _
3- they can include full stops
4- they can’t include spaces or other punctuation.

Let’s try an example

Open up a new Excel workbook
Select the group of cells A1 to A6
Click in the name box and enter the name Widgets_Sales
Press Enter

You will then see your named range in the name box, when you select the named range from the drop down box your corresponding cells will be highlighted.
Lets try another example using the second way using the Define Name dialog box.

Open up an new Excel workbook

1. Insert menu
2. Name
3. Define

The Define name dialog box is opened
Enter the name of the range in this case Widgets_Sales
In the refers to box you can adjust the range of cells if you need to
Click ok.

Each name you choose if you have more than one must be unique in your workbook, any names you have already used will be
displayed in the scrolling box. If you do use the same name again, then the existing named range will be replaced with
the most recent, with no warning.

Any of the names you enter are not case senstive but will be displayed as you type them, so, be careful if you type something like Widgets_Year with WIDGETS_YEAR, the new range of WIDGETS_YEAR will replace the former as it is not
case sensitive.

Go ahead and try some examples creating named ranges. In the next post we will look at using named ranges to refer to a constant value. Click here to jump right ahead.