Named Ranges - what characters are (or are not) allowed in the nam

I'm trying to create named ranges programmatically and need to know what
characters are and are not allowed in the names. So far, I assume that _ and
text are included. I know that a lot of special characters are not
(&,+,-,space, etc).

Can someone assist?

Thanks,
Barb

Hi Barb,

From Excel Help:

What characters are allowed? The first character of a name must be a letter, an underscore character (_), or a backslash (\).
Remaining characters in the name can be letters, numbers, periods, and underscore characters.


--
Kind regards,

Niek Otten
Microsoft MVP - Excel


"Barb Reinhardt" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
| I'm trying to create named ranges programmatically and need to know what
| characters are and are not allowed in the names. So far, I assume that _ and
| text are included. I know that a lot of special characters are not
| (&,+,-,space, etc).
|
| Can someone assist?
|
| Thanks,
| Barb

Barb,

Names can contain letters, numbers, and underscores, and the first character cannot be a number.
Also, the name cannot be interpreted by Excel as a valid range address in either A1 or R1C1
notation: C, C1, AA45, CC1245, R12C13, etc are invalid. And it's a good idea to have at least 5
leading alpha characters, since Excel 2007 will have up to 4 alphas as column letters.

Visit

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/named.htm

for more.


HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP


"Barb Reinhardt" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I'm trying to create named ranges programmatically and need to know what
> characters are and are not allowed in the names. So far, I assume that _ and
> text are included. I know that a lot of special characters are not
> (&,+,-,space, etc).
>
> Can someone assist?
>
> Thanks,
> Barb

<Also, the name cannot be interpreted by Excel as a valid range address in either A1 or R1C1 >

Good point! And if there's any chance of your workbook being used in other language versions of Excel (RK, LC, etc) avoid this
construction anyway.

--
Kind regards,

Niek Otten
Microsoft MVP - Excel

"Bernie Deitrick" <deitbe @ consumer dot org> wrote in message news:%[email protected]...
| Barb,
|
| Names can contain letters, numbers, and underscores, and the first character cannot be a number.
| Also, the name cannot be interpreted by Excel as a valid range address in either A1 or R1C1
| notation: C, C1, AA45, CC1245, R12C13, etc are invalid. And it's a good idea to have at least 5
| leading alpha characters, since Excel 2007 will have up to 4 alphas as column letters.
|
| Visit
|
| http://www.cpearson.com/excel/named.htm
|
| for more.
|
|
| HTH,
| Bernie
| MS Excel MVP
|
|
| "Barb Reinhardt" <[email protected]> wrote in message
| news:[email protected]...
| > I'm trying to create named ranges programmatically and need to know what
| > characters are and are not allowed in the names. So far, I assume that _ and
| > text are included. I know that a lot of special characters are not
| > (&,+,-,space, etc).
| >
| > Can someone assist?
| >
| > Thanks,
| > Barb
|
|

In addition to what is above the following characters are not allowed:

(
)
,
;
:
&
/

brackets, comma, ampersand, colon, semi-colon & ampersand.

There may be others.

Joe

Checking in 6 years later letting y'all know this thread is still relevant