Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Grabbing a User's Name from Excel.

Grabbing a User's Name from Excel

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated June 23, 2018)

8

Mark has a worksheet where he wants to record the name of a user, but rather than asking the user to fill in a form, he wants to automatically grab their username from Excel.

The username that a person sets in Excel when first installing the software or when changing the general options for the program cannot be accessed via formula. Instead, you need to use a macro to access the information and then make it available to your worksheet. This is possible through the use of a user-defined function. Consider the following simple example:

Function GetUserName()
    GetUserName = Application.UserName
End Function

Note that the macro does nothing more than to access the UserName property of the Application object. You use this function in your worksheet in the following manner:

=GetUserName()

With this simple formula in a cell, the username is displayed in the cell.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the ExcelTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (3289) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Grabbing a User's Name from Excel.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is 1 + 9?

2019-09-17 03:49:33

Rahul Takalikar

Formula in Cell H1 "=INFO("DIRECTORY")"

Formula in Cell H2 "=LEFT(RIGHT(H1,LEN(H1)-9),LEN(RIGHT(H1,LEN(H1)-9))-11)"

This should work

2019-07-29 09:35:56

Lisa

Very helpful, I find myself referring to your site quite a bit as I am learning more and more about programming in Excel. The above command to grab the username works nicely, is there a way to incorporate this with an IF statement? Say a user has typed an X in cell D23, I would like to display that user's username in cell C23. if there is no X I don't want their username...

2017-10-19 07:46:22

mahdiar

hi.how i get users group name from excel vba?

2017-03-21 14:54:13

Kathleen

I receive the same error as Nomka - "It did not work for me showing error #Name?"

2016-09-30 10:19:54

Raj

it's helpful..thanks.

2016-04-12 18:08:18

Brenda

it works but when I give the workbook to a co-worker, their name - sometimes appears.?? Sometimes it still displays my name.

2015-11-03 09:25:22

awyatt

Nomka: You would get that error in the workbook if you didn't create the macro (GetUserName) in a regular module in that workbook.

-Allen

2015-11-03 05:31:44

Nomka

It did not work for me showing error #Name?

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