Written by The New Paperclip on October 15, 2006 – 2:47 pm
A colleague of mine came running over to my desk the other day in quite a pickle! He said “The New Paperclip… how on Earth do I name a range in Excel 2007?”
“Simple my friend” I replied. Little did he know that I have no idea where it was, but I put my faith into the beauty that is the Ribbon to figure it out.
For the uninitiated, Naming a range is a great tool you can use in Excel. It allows you to give a descriptive name to a range (like ‘Expenses’) instead of using the normal notation like (A10:A25). Very handy if you work with quite a few formulas in a sheet.
So back to solving the problem. Firstly, why would you name a range in Excel? The answer is to make it easier to work with formulas. So straight away I went looking for the Formulas tab in the Ribbon. And there it was, a whole section on Named cells, which included the Name Manager (which enables you to control all the name references you have added to your workbook), Name a Range, and a few other Name functions.
Problem solved, in about 3 seconds flat. The Ribbon is definitely going to make people more productive, just as long as they start thinking in a “Results Orientated” way. Not too much of a shift if you ask me!
tags: excel 2007, named range
Funny, where your screen shot shows “Name a range” mine says “Define name”. I’m using Beta 2 TR.
You got me… I have been lazy and havn’t updated to TR2 yet :( *Kicks Off Upgrade!*
–TNP
I just worked out you can also name a range by typing a name in the textbox to the left of the formula bar. Removing it - that is another matter, you have to go to the Name Manager.