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Excel worksheet name won't go beyond 31 characters
Thread poster: Steven Smith
Steven Smith
Steven Smith
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:03
Member (2007)
Japanese to English
Dec 9, 2006

I'm sure it must be possible to increase the length of the worksheet name in Excel (2003) beyond 31 characters but I can't find out how to do it. Can anyone tell me?

Thanks

Steven Smith
 
mjbjosh
mjbjosh
Local time: 19:03
English to Latvian
+ ...
Directory problem? Dec 9, 2006

What O/S do you use? I think Windows allows something like 264 characters in the filename. You have to remember that filename includes the directory path.

Your directory path probably looks similar to this:

C:\Documents and Settings\John Doe\My Documents\Company XXX\Projext YYY\Source Texts\etc....

The path name alone can have more than 200 characters, so that's why you can use only 31 chars for the file name itself. If you moved the file to C:\ or a direct... See more
What O/S do you use? I think Windows allows something like 264 characters in the filename. You have to remember that filename includes the directory path.

Your directory path probably looks similar to this:

C:\Documents and Settings\John Doe\My Documents\Company XXX\Projext YYY\Source Texts\etc....

The path name alone can have more than 200 characters, so that's why you can use only 31 chars for the file name itself. If you moved the file to C:\ or a directory with a shorter path name, you could most probably select a longer filename.

[Edited at 2006-12-09 18:24] ▲ Collapse
 
Steven Smith
Steven Smith
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:03
Member (2007)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
Maybe I misled you Dec 9, 2006

Sorry, I mean the worksheet title as it appears on the tab at the bottom of the worksheet. I have multiple worksheets in a workbook and I need to change their names, but when I try this using 'rename' I can't get past 31 characters.

Steven
 
Antoní­n Otáhal
Antoní­n Otáhal
Local time: 19:03
Member (2005)
English to Czech
+ ...
no go Dec 9, 2006

AFAIK, 31 is really the maximum length of a worksheet name.

Antonin
 
William [Bill] Gray
William [Bill] Gray  Identity Verified
Norway
Local time: 19:03
Member (2006)
English
+ ...
No go, Steven... Dec 10, 2006

Here is a link which agrees with Antonin.

But wait a few years, and it will probably change!!

Bill

http://www.excelforum.com/archive/index.php/t-501663.html



[Edited at 2006-12-10 13:11]
 
ishould
ishould
United States
8 years later Sep 4, 2014

and 8 years later it is still 31 char limit...
 
Oliver Walter
Oliver Walter  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:03
German to English
+ ...
Why 31 Sep 6, 2014

I imagine the limit is 31 because
(a) the designers who specified this number thought that most worksheet names would probably be up to about 8 or perhaps 12 characters but they should allow longer ones, and
(b) 31 is the largest number that can be represented in a 5-bit data field (e.g. 00000 is zero, 00101 is five, 11111 is 31) and 5 bits was a convenient size for the field (within the data structure that defines a spreadsheet) that tells Excel the number of characters in this name... See more
I imagine the limit is 31 because
(a) the designers who specified this number thought that most worksheet names would probably be up to about 8 or perhaps 12 characters but they should allow longer ones, and
(b) 31 is the largest number that can be represented in a 5-bit data field (e.g. 00000 is zero, 00101 is five, 11111 is 31) and 5 bits was a convenient size for the field (within the data structure that defines a spreadsheet) that tells Excel the number of characters in this name.
Oliver ▲ Collapse
 


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Excel worksheet name won't go beyond 31 characters






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