Creating and Using Named Ranges

A named range lets you give a friendly label to a cell or block of cells. Instead of remembering that your sales figures live in B2:B13, you can simply call that area Sales.

Once a range has a name, you can use that name anywhere you would normally type the address. Your formulas read like plain English, and they stop breaking when you move the data around.

• =SUM(B2:B13) becomes =SUM(Sales)
• Names work in both Excel and Google Sheets

Named ranges solve three everyday problems:

• Readability — =Revenue-Costs is instantly clearer than =C2-C3.
• Reliability — the name follows the data, so inserting rows above will not point the formula at the wrong cells.
• Reuse — type one name in many formulas instead of re-typing a long address.

For a tax rate stored in one cell, a name like TaxRate makes every formula self-documenting.