Easy access to referred ranges

Using Excel can be cumbersome sometimes. As you gain more confidence, you introduce complexities within your formula and setup. To address this, Excel has many tools available for you and one of these is the Name definition facility .



In Excel, you can define names that refers to frequently used Excel objects - from cells, ranges to complex formulas. This has many uses so it is worthwhile to discuss how to use it.

Let us start with associating a static range to a name.

• First you need to highlight the range you want to use.
  

• Access the Name Definition facility by clicking >>Insert>>Name>>Define>> option in the menu.
  

• Then specify the name you have chosen in the Names in Workbook textbox (in this example it is lstName).
  

• Click the Add button to complete the process.

What you have created here is basically list associated to a name. If you want to refer to this range, you can easily do this by using the associated name.

One advantage of this is that it simplifies updates . Say you refer to this range in many formula and you have to update it (maybe extend it to add new values), you need the range associated with name and the formula remains the same.

There are other uses of names that are not included in today's post. Maybe I can discuss them next time. Till then.