Excel — Can Defined Names improve your spreadsheets
Have you ever wondered what in the world is that little box just to the left of the formula for? Sure, it shows you what cell you are in but what good does that do?
That little box is called the NAME box.
You can select a cell or a range of cells and then click in that box and Define a Name for that selection. You should note that NAMES use absolute cell references.
In this example, I selected the entire column H and named it “Gross_Sales” Select your range, type right in the box and hit Enter.
You can now use the name Gross_Sales in formulas instead of selecting the entire range manually.
So if you wanted to know the sum of all Gross Sales. Instead of selecting all the rows in the list (row 703) I just picked any cell, anywhere on the spreadsheet and entered the following: =SUM(Gross_Sales)
There is a lot more functionality to explore with Defined Names, but this will give you an introduction to get you started.
Defined Names can also help others better understand the formulas in a shared workbook.
=SUM(Gross_Sales) seems pretty obvious what it is. While the same formula without the Name =SUM($H$2:H703) might take a extra few seconds to figure out what the number actual means.
