Who knew (Just another day with Excel)?

Gašper Kamenšek

September 12, 2014
8 Comments

One day as I was giving a basic(!!!!) Excel training, my mind got sort of blown. We were discussing the use of A1:A100 in the Name Box for the selection of a range of cells from A1 to A100. You can see this in action here. It went by as it did a million times before except for a lady that said: “You could just as well put A1..A100 in the Name Box”.

You can imagine my reaction which was in the neighborhood of “Well…, you cant do that! Can You? I mean, well… I don’t know. Lets try it out…”

And we did. Found out it really works, you can even use it in a function for example =SUM(A1..A100). Excel will “auto correct” the .. to a : when you will view the function later, but it will work. Now as mesmerized as I was by this, I started wondering…
I wonder why this is so and who else knows about this, and I saw this as a perfect opportunity to start a very first Excel Unplugged Poll.

If anyone knows of a logic behind this and how you can use it please share by commenting…