Pulling Cell Names into VBA

If you have used Excel for any length of time, you undoubtedly know that you can define names in your worksheets that refer to various cells and ranges of cells. You can even define names that refer to constants and to formulas. (The naming abilities of Excel are really quite handy.)

As you are developing macros, you may wonder if there is a way to retrieve a list of defined names within a worksheet. This is actually quite easy, if you remember that the defined names are maintained in the Names collection, which belongs to the Workbook object. With this in mind, you can use the following code to put together a variable array that consists of all the names in a workbook:

    Dim NamesList()
    Dim NumNames As Integer
    Dim x As Integer

    NumNames = ActiveWorkbook.Names.Count

    ReDim NamesList(1 To NumNames)

    For x = 1 To NumNames
        NamesList(x) = ActiveWorkbook.Names(x).Name
    Next x