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Range names come at a price. Try copying a sheet into another workbook that has conflicting names. Or copy-pasting your table in the same sheet to do something slightly different.

I use excel a lot and I found that the only convincing use case for range names is if you need to refer to ranges from VBA, then this is the only way for the code to find its way on a spreadsheet even if someone inserts some rows and columns. Otherwise range names create more problems than they solve.



>>Try copying a sheet into another workbook that has conflicting names.

This is really like copy pasting code from one namespace into other, with code in both spaces having same variable names.

You really need to think of a spreadsheet as a function. It must have single responsibility and must be called by another sheet to be used.


And now you're designing a system which has none of the benefits of Excel for end-users, again.


We are designing nothing, excel allows you to create variables with names assured unique in a namespace(A single spreadsheet). You could use it any way you like.

But if you are copying a formula that has things like variable names into a new sheet, you have to understand that pasting the formula with its variables pointing to nothing is like inducing a NullPointerException.


Yes, the point is, this is why people avoid naming things in Excel. Getting them to name things removes functionality.


In the following case:

     //B1 is renamed as first
     //B2 is renamed as second 
     _______________
      f(x)| C3 = first * second
     _______________
       A | B | C | D
      _______________
    1|___|_2_|___|__
    2|___|_3_|___|__
    3|___|___|___|__
    4|   |   |   |  

vs

     _______________
      f(x)| C3 = B1 * B2
     _______________
       A | B | C | D
      _______________
    1|___|_2_|___|__
    2|___|_3_|___|__
    3|___|___|___|__
    4|   |   |   |  

It barely matters if you copy paste the first one or second one into a new sheet. C3 will be pointing to null. If anything its easy to trouble shoot former because you can chose any cell in the spreadsheet and call it 'first', chose another and call it 'second'- Compared to say to having fixed cells B1 for first and B2 for last.




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