010 Unhide Hidden Names
010 Unhide Hidden Names
010 Unhide Hidden Names
When you create a Name in Excel, you can’t make it invisible in the name manger. You can
only do this in VBA. However some files that use Add-ins can contain hidden names. These
can become obsolete after a while and can make your Excel slow, especially if you have
bigger files. When you copy these tabs to other workbooks, the hidden names come along
as well, even though you probably don’t need these anymore.
Inspect your document by going to File / Check for Issues / Inspect Document . Does it
have hidden names? If yes, you will see that Excel can’t remove it for you. You need a
macro to do this.
One method is to make them visible and then delete them from name manager.
1
Copy this Macro to your VBA Editor
Now open the VBA editor. Press Alt + F11 to get there fast.
Click on ThisWorkbook. Copy and paste the code below in the code window.
Sub ShowHiddenNames()
Dim i As Name
For Each i In ActiveWorkbook.Names
i.Visible = True
Next i
End Sub
To run the code, go back to your Excel file. Go to View / Macros / View Macros.
Now go back to Name Manager. All the hidden names are now visible.
2
Remove unwanted names
You can see there are A LOT of hidden names in this file. Highlight them and Delete. Make
sure you exclude the names you had at the beginning.