Invalid Characters in Excel XP Worksheet Names?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kristin Broggi
  • Start date Start date
K

Kristin Broggi

Does anyone have (or can point me in the direction of) a
list of invalid characters for Excel XP Worksheet names?
Thank you
Kristin
 
Did you try Excel's Help?

I found the following (Excel XP) by searching for 'names' and looking at the topic 'about labels
and names in formulas'.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Guidelines for names
What characters are allowed? The first character of a name must be a letter or an underscore
character. Remaining characters in the name can be letters, numbers, periods, and underscore
characters.

Can names be cell references? Names cannot be the same as a cell reference, such as Z$100 or
R1C1.

Can more than one word be used? Yes, but spaces are not allowed. Underscore characters and
periods may be used as word separators — for example, Sales_Tax or First.Quarter.

How many characters can be used? A name can contain up to 255 characters.

Note If a name defined for a range contains more than 253 characters, you cannot select it
from the Name box.

Are names case sensitive? Names can contain uppercase and lowercase letters. Microsoft Excel
does not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase characters in names. For example, if you
have created the name Sales and then create another name called SALES in the same workbook, the
second name will replace the first one.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Thank you. Excel help did not have anything that I could
find. I will check Knowledge Base.
Kristin
 
Hi Kristin,
Simply rename a worksheet tab with something that includes at
least one invalid character, one such invalid character is backslash

and you get a list of invalid characters

characters not allowed in sheetnames
: \ / ? * [ or ]
colon, back slash, forward slash, question mark, left and right square brackets.

Sheetnames may be up to 31 characters in length.

Most of the characters Richard gave as example are valid,
the forward and backard slashes are not valid, but the
period, left and right parens, dollar sign, commercial at sign,
and ampersand are all valid.
 
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