Column and row names in excel

Columns and rows are labeled numerically in Excel

Symptoms

Your column labels are numeric rather than alphabetic. For example, instead of seeing A, B, and C at the top of your worksheet columns, you see 1, 2, 3, and so on.

Cause

This behavior occurs when the R1C1 reference style check box is selected in the Options dialog box.

Resolution

To change this behavior, follow these steps:

1. Start Microsoft Excel.
2. On the Tools menu, click Options.
3. Click the Formulas tab.
4. Under Working with formulas, click to clear the R1C1 reference style check box (upper-left corner), and then click OK.

If you select the R1C1 reference style check box, Excel changes the reference style of both row and column headings, and cell references from the A1 style to the R1C1 style.

More information

A1 Reference Style vs. R1C1 Reference Style

The A1 Reference Style

By default, Excel uses the A1 reference style, which refers to columns as letters (A through IV, for a total of 256 columns), and refers to rows as numbers (1 through 65,536). These letters and numbers are called row and column headings. To refer to a cell, type the column letter followed by the row number. For example, D50 refers to the cell at the intersection of column D and row 50. To refer to a range of cells, type the reference for the cell that is in the upper-left corner of the range, type a colon (:), and then type the reference to the cell that is in the lower-right corner of the range.

The R1C1 Reference Style

Excel can also use the R1C1 reference style, in which both the rows and the columns on the worksheet are numbered. The R1C1 reference style is useful if you want to compute row and column positions in macros. In the R1C1 style, Excel indicates the location of a cell with an «R» followed by a row number and a «C» followed by a column number.

References

For more information about this topic, click Microsoft Excel Help on the Help menu, type about cell and range references in the Office Assistant or the Answer Wizard, and then click Search to view the topic.

Источник

Define and use names in formulas

By using names, you can make your formulas much easier to understand and maintain. You can define a name for a cell range, function, constant, or table. Once you adopt the practice of using names in your workbook, you can easily update, audit, and manage these names.

Name a cell

In the Name Box, type a name.

To reference this value in another table, type th equal sign (=) and the Name, then select Enter.

Define names from a selected range

Select the range you want to name, including the row or column labels.

Select Formulas > Create from Selection.

In the Create Names from Selection dialog box, designate the location that contains the labels by selecting the Top row, Left column, Bottom row, or Right column check box.

Excel names the cells based on the labels in the range you designated.

Use names in formulas

Select a cell and enter a formula.

Place the cursor where you want to use the name in that formula.

Type the first letter of the name, and select the name from the list that appears.

Or, select Formulas > Use in Formula and select the name you want to use.

Manage names in your workbook with Name Manager

On the ribbon, go to Formulas > Name Manager. You can then create, edit, delete, and find all the names used in the workbook.

Name a cell

In the Name Box, type a name.

Define names from a selected range

Select the range you want to name, including the row or column labels.

Select Formulas > Create from Selection.

In the Create Names from Selection dialog box, designate the location that contains the labels by selecting the Top row, Left column, Bottom row, or Right column check box.

Excel names the cells based on the labels in the range you designated.

Use names in formulas

Select a cell and enter a formula.

Place the cursor where you want to use the name in that formula.

Type the first letter of the name, and select the name from the list that appears.

Or, select Formulas > Use in Formula and select the name you want to use.

Manage names in your workbook with Name Manager

On the Ribbon, go to Formulas > Defined Names > Name Manager. You can then create, edit, delete, and find all the names used in the workbook.

In Excel for the web, you can use the named ranges you’ve defined in Excel for Windows or Mac. Select a name from the Name Box to go to the range’s location, or use the Named Range in a formula.

For now, creating a new Named Range in Excel for the web is not available.

Need more help?

You can always ask an expert in the Excel Tech Community or get support in the Answers community.

Источник

How to change the name of the column headers in Excel

In Microsoft Excel, the column headers are named A, B, C, and so on by default. Some users want to change the names of the column headers to something more meaningful. Unfortunately, Excel does not allow the header names to be changed.

The same applies to row names in Excel. You cannot change the row names, or numbering, but you can add your desired row names in column A for the corresponding rows.

Instead, if you want to have meaningful column header names, you can do the following.

1. Click in the first row of the worksheet and insert a new row above that first row.

• How to add or remove a cell, column, or row in Excel.

1. In the inserted row, enter the preferred name for each column.
2. To make the row of column names more noticeable, you could increase the text size, make the text bold, or add background color to the cells in that row.

After inserting the new row and adding column header names, if you want to hide the default column header names, follow the steps below to hide column and row headers.

1. In Microsoft Excel, click the File tab or the Office button in the upper-left corner.
2. In the left navigation pane, click Options.
3. In the Excel Options window, click the Advanced option in the left navigation pane.
4. Scroll down to the Display options for this worksheet section. Uncheck the box for Show row and column headers.

The column and row headers are now hidden. To display them again, re-check the box in step 4 above.

Источник

How to get the current column name in Excel?

What is the function to get the current line number and the current column name for a cell in Excel?

17 Answers 17

You can use the ROW and COLUMN functions to do this. If you omit the argument for those formulas, the current cell is used. These can be directly used with the OFFSET function, or any other function where you can specify both the row and column as numerical values.

For example, if you enter =ROW() in cell D8, the value returned is 8. If you enter =COLUMN() in the same cell, the value returned is 4.

If you want the column letter, you can use the CHAR function. I do not recommend the use of letters to represent the column, as things get tricky when passing into double-letter column names (where just using numbers is more logical anyways).

Regardless, if you should still want to get the column letter, you can simply add 64 to the column number (64 being one character less then A ), so in the previous example, if you set the cell’s value to =CHAR(COLUMN()+64) , the value returned would be D . If you wanted a cell’s value to be the cell location itself, the complete formula would be =CHAR(COLUMN()+64) & ROW() .

Just an FYI, I got 64 from an ASCII table. You could also use the CODE formula, so the updated formula using this would be =CHAR(COLUMN() + CODE(«A») — 1) . You have to subtract 1 since the minimum value of COLUMN is always 1, and then the minimum return value of the entire formula would be B .

However, this will not work with two-letter columns. In that case, you need the following formula to properly parse two-letter columns:

Источник

How to sort in Excel by row, column names and in custom order

by Alexander Frolov, updated on February 17, 2023

In this article I will show you how to sort Excel data by several columns, by column names in alphabetical order and by values in any row. Also, you will learn how to sort data in non-standard ways, when sorting alphabetically or numerically does not work.

I believe everyone knows how to sort by column alphabetically or in ascending / descending order. All you need to do is click the A-Z or Z-A buttons residing on the Home tab in the Editing group and on the Data tab in the Sort & Filter group:

However, the Excel Sort feature provides far more options and capabilities that are not so obvious but may come in extremely handy:

Sort by several columns

Now I’m going to show you how to sort Excel data by two or more columns. I will do this in Excel 2010 because I have this version installed on my computer. If you use another Excel version, you won’t have any problems with following the examples because the sorting features are pretty much the same in Excel 2007 and Excel 2013. You may only notice some differences in color schemes and dialogs’ layouts. Okay, let’s go ahead.

1. Click the Sort button on the Data tab or Custom Sort on the Home tab to open the Sort dialog.
2. Then click the Add Level button as many times as many columns you want to use for sorting:

From the «Sort by» and «Then by» dropdown lists, select the columns by which you want to sort your data. For example, you are planning your holiday and have a list of hotels provided by a travel agency. You want to sort them first by Region, then by Board basis and finally by Price, as shown in the screenshot:

Click OK and here you are:

• Firstly, the Region column is sorted first, in the alphabetic order.
• Secondly, the Board basis column is sorted, so that all-inclusive (AL) hotels are at the top of the list.
• Finally, the Price column is sorted, from smallest to largest.

Sorting data by multiple columns in Excel is pretty easy, isn’t it? However, the Sort dialog has plenty more features. Further on in this article I will show you how to sort by row, not column, and how to re-arrange data in your worksheet alphabetically based on column names. Also, you will learn how to sort your Excel data in non-standard ways, when sorting in alphabetical or numerical order does not work.

Tip. If values you wish to sort include text and numeric characters, check out How to sort mixed numbers and text in Excel.

Sort in Excel by row and by column names

I guess in 90% of cases when you are sorting data in Excel, you sort by values in one or several columns. However, sometimes we have non-trivial data sets and we do need to sort by row (horizontally), i.e. rearrange the order of columns from left to right based on column headers or values in a particular row.

For example, you have a list of photo cameras provided by a local seller or downloaded from the Internet. The list contains different features, specifications and prices like this:

What you need is to sort the photo cameras by some parameters that matter the most for you. As an example, let’s sort them by model name first.

Select the range of data you want to sort. If you want to re-arrange all the columns, you can simply select any cell within your range. We cannot do this for our data because Column A lists different features and we want it to stick in place. So, our selection starts with cell B1:

Click the Sort button on the Data tab to open the Sort dialog. Notice the «My data has headers» checkbox in the upper-right part of the dialog, you should uncheck it if your worksheet does not have headers. Since our sheet has headers, we leave the tick and click the Options button.

In the opening Sort Options dialog under Orientation, choose Sort left to right, and click OK.

Then select the row by which you want to sort. In our example, we select Row 1 that contains the photo camera names. Make sure you have «Values» selected under Sort on and «A to Z» under Order, then click OK.

The result of your sorting should look similar to this:

I know that sorting by column names has very little practical sense in our case and we did it for demonstration purposes only so that you can get a feel of how it works. In a similar way, you can sort the list of cameras by size, or imaging sensor, or sensor type, or any other feature that is most critical for you. For instance, let’s sort them by price for a start.

What you do is go through steps 1 — 3 as described above and then, on step 4, instead of Row 2 you select Row 4 that lists retail prices. The result of sorting will look like this:

Please note that it’s not just one row that has been sorted. The entire columns were moved so that the data was not distorted. In other words, what you see in the screenshot above is the list of photo cameras sorted from cheapest to most expensive.

Hope now you’ve gained an insight into how sorting a row works in Excel. But what if we have data that does not sort well alphabetically or numerically?

Sort data in custom order (using a custom list)

If you want to sort your data in some custom order other than alphabetical, you can use the built-in Excel custom lists or create your own. With built-in custom lists, you can sort by days of the week or months of the year. Microsoft Excel provides two types of such custom lists — with abbreviated and full names:

Say, we have a list of weekly household chores and we want to sort them by due day or priority.

1. You start with selecting the data you want to sort and then opening the Sort dialog exactly like we did when sorting by multiple columns or by column names (Data tab >Sort button).
2. In the Sort by box, select the column you want to sort by, in our case it is the Day column since we want to sort our tasks by the days of the week. Then choose Custom List under Order as shown in the screenshot:

In the Custom Lists dialog box, select the needed list. Since we have the abbreviated day names in the Day columns, we choose the corresponding custom list and click OK.

That’s it! Now we have our household tasks sorted by the day of the week:

Note. If you want to change something in your data, please keep in mind that new or modified data won’t get sorted automatically. You need to click the Reapply button on the Data tab, in the Sort & Filter group:

Well, as you see sorting Excel data by custom list does not present any challenge either. The last thing that is left for us to do is to sort data by our own custom list.

Sort data by your own custom list

As you remember, we have one more column in the table, the Priority column. In order to sort your weekly chores from most important to less important, you proceed as follows.

Perform steps 1 and 2 described above, and when you have the Custom Lists dialog open, select the NEW LIST in the left-hand column under Custom Lists, and type the entries directly into the List entries box on the right. Remember to type your entries exactly in the same order you want them to be sorted, from top to bottom:

Click Add and you will see that the newly created custom list is added to the existing custom lists, then click OK:

And here come our household tasks, sorted by priority:

When you use custom lists for sorting, you are free to sort by multiple columns and use a different custom list in each case. The process is exactly the same as we have already discussed when sorting by several columns.

And finally, we have our weekly household chores sorted with the utmost logic, first by the day of the week, and then by priority 🙂

That’s all for today, thank you for reading!

Источник

Rows and Column in Excel (Table of Contents)

• Introduction to Rows and Column in Excel
• Rows and Column Navigation in excel
• How to Select Rows and Column in excel?
• Adjusting Column Width

Introduction to Rows and Column in Excel

In Microsoft excel, if we open a new workbook, we can see that sheet will contain tables with light grey color. Basically excel is a tabular format which contains n number of rows and columns, where rows in excel will be in a horizontal line, and column in excel will be in a vertical line.

• In excel, we can find each row by its row number, which is shown in the below screenshot, which shows vertical numbers on the left side of each sheet.

• As we can see in the above screenshot that each row can be identified by their row numbers like 1, 2, 3 etc.
• Whereas we can find the column in excel, which can be identified by the column header like A, B, C. which will be shown normally in all excel sheets, which are shown below.

• In Excel, each column is named by its header, which shows the column header horizontally at the top of the excel sheet.

In Microsoft Excel 2010 and the latest version, we have row numbers ranging from 1 to 1048576 in 1048576, whereas the column ranges from A to XFD in a total of 16384 columns which is shown in the below screenshot.

Rows in excel range from 1 to 1048576, which is highlighted in red mark

The column in excel ranges from A to XFD, which is highlighted in red mark.

Rows and Column Navigation in excel

In this example, we will see how to navigate rows and columns with the below examples.

We can find the last row of excel by using the keyboard shortcut key CTRL+DOWN NAVIGATION ARROW KEY, or else we can use the vertical scrollbars to go to the end of the row.

We can find the last column of excel by using the CTRL+RIGHT NAVIGATION ARROW KEY, or else we can use the horizontal scrollbars to go to the end of the column.

How to Select Rows and Column in excel?

In this example, we will learn how to select the rows and columns in excel.

You can download this Rows and Column Excel Template here – Rows and Column Excel Template

Rows and Column in Excel – Example#1

Normally, when we open a workbook, we can see that sheet contains tabular rows and columns where each row is specified by their row number and column specified by their column header.

Consider the below example, which has some data in an excel sheet. Here we will see how to select the rows and columns.

In the above screenshot, we can see that names and age column have their own header name A and B, and each row has its own row number.

In excel, each time when we select a row or column, “Name Box” will display the specific row number and column name, which is shown in the below screenshot.

In this example, we will select the Names and Age, and let’s see how the rows and column header is getting displayed.

Step 1 – First, select the cell Name John.

Step 2 – Once you select the cell name, John, we will get the row number and column name as A2 in the name box, which means that we have selected A column second row as A2, shown below screenshot with yellow highlighted.

Step 3 – Now select cell 23, where it will show the selected cell is B2 which is shown in the below screenshot with yellow highlighted.

Step 4 – Now select all the names and columns to show that we have 4 rows and 2 columns shown in the below screenshot.

In this way, we can identify the row number and column name by selecting each cell in excel.

Example#2 – Changing Row and Column Size

This example shows how to change the row and column size by using the following examples.

Excel row and column width size can be modified by using the format option in the HOME menu, which is shown below.

Using the format menu, we can change the row and column width where we have the list option, which are as follows:

• ROW HEIGHT– This is used to adjust the row height.
• AUTOFIT ROW HEIGHT– This will automatically adjust the row height.
• COLUMN WIDTH – This is used to adjust column width.
• AUTOFIT COLUMN WIDTH– This will automatically adjust the column width.

Let’s consider the below example to change the row and column width. Follow the below steps.

Step 1 – First, select the second row as shown in the below screenshot.

Step 2 – Go to the Format menu and click on ROW HEIGHT, as shown below.

Step 3 – Once we select the ROW HEIGHT, we will get the below dialog box to change the height of the row.

Step 4 – Now increase the row height to 25 so that the selected row height will get increased, as shown in the below screenshot.

We can see that row height has been increased when compared to the previous one; alternatively, we can change the row height by using the mouse.

Step 5 – Now go to the second option in the format list called AUTOFIT ROW HEIGHT, which will automatically reset the row to its original height.

Step 6 – Select the same row and go to the Format menu.

Step 7 – Now select the “AutoFit Row Height” as shown below.

Once we click on the “AutoFit Row Height” option, the row height will reset to the original position, shown below.

Adjusting Column Width

We can adjust the column width in the same way by using the format option.

Step 1 – First, click on the cell B cell as shown below.

Step 2 – Now go to the Format menu and click on column width as shown in the below screenshot.

Once we click on the Column width, we will get the below dialog box to increase the column width, as shown below.

Step 3 – Now increase the column width by 15 to increase the selected column width.

In the above screenshot, we can see that column width has been increased; alternatively, we can adjust the column width by using the mouse where if we place the mouse cursor, we will get the + plus mark sign near to the column.

Step 4 – Now click on the next option called “AutoFit Column width”. So that the selected column will get reset to its original size, which is shown below.

Things to Remember 

• In excel, we can delete and insert multiple rows and columns.
• We can hide the specific row and columns using the hide option.
• Row and column cells can be protected by locking the specific cells.

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to Rows and Columns in Excel. Here we also discuss Rows and Columns in Excel along with practical examples and downloadable excel template. You can also go through our other suggested articles –

1. Excel Compare Two Columns
2. Unhide Columns in Excel
3. Sort Columns in Excel
4. Excel Columns to Rows