Named references, constants, formulas, and macros

A name is used to refer to a cell, a group of cells, a constant value, a formula, or a macro. Usually the scope of a name is global across the whole workbook. However it can be local to a worksheet. For example, if the sales figures are in different cells in different sheets, the user may define the name “Sales” in each sheet. There are built-in names, like “Print_Area” and “Print_Titles”; these two are naturally local to a sheet.

To inspect the names with a user interface like MS Excel, OOo Calc, or Gnumeric, click on Insert -> Names -> Define. This will show the global names, plus those local to the currently selected sheet.

A Book object provides two dictionaries (Book.name_map and Book.name_and_scope_map) and a list (Book.name_obj_list) which allow various ways of accessing the Name objects. There is one Name object for each NAME record found in the workbook. Name objects have many attributes, several of which are relevant only when obj.macro is 1.

In the examples directory you will find namesdemo.xls which showcases the many different ways that names can be used, and xlrdnamesAPIdemo.py which offers 3 different queries for inspecting the names in your files, and shows how to extract whatever a name is referring to. There is currently one “convenience method”, Name.cell(), which extracts the value in the case where the name refers to a single cell. The source code for Name.cell() is an extra source of information on how the Name attributes hang together.

Note

Name information is not extracted from files older than Excel 5.0 (Book.biff_version < 50).