Pulling Cell Names into VBA

Summary: Excel allows you to define names that can refer to either ranges of cells or to constant information, such as formulas. If you have quite a few names in a workbook, you may want to derive a list of those names. The macro in this tip allows you to pull them all and place them in a worksheet where you can continue to work with them. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.)

If you have used Excel for any length of time, you undoubtedly know that you can define names in your worksheets that refer to various cells and ranges of cells. You can even define names that refer to constants and to formulas. (The naming abilities of Excel are really quite handy.)

As you are developing macros, you may wonder if there is a way to retrieve a list of defined names within a worksheet. This is actually quite easy, if you remember that the defined names are maintained in the Names collection, which belongs to the Workbook object. With this in mind, you can use the following code to put together a variable array that consists of all the names in a workbook:

    Dim NamesList()
    Dim NumNames As Integer
    Dim x As Integer

    NumNames = ActiveWorkbook.Names.Count

    ReDim NamesList(1 To NumNames)

    For x = 1 To NumNames
        NamesList(x) = ActiveWorkbook.Names(x).Name
    Next x

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2283) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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Pulling Cell Names into VBA