Is there a limit on an Excel worksheet's name length?

Question

Is there a limit on an Excel worksheet's name length?

When I try to set a longish worksheet name using ruby and win32ole with the following code:

require "win32ole"
excel = WIN32OLE.new('Excel.Application')
excel.Visible = 1
puts excel.version
workbook = excel.Workbooks.Add
worksheet1 = workbook.Worksheets.Add
worksheet1.Name = "Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism" #Length 30, fine
worksheet2 = workbook.Worksheets.Add
worksheet2.Name = "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" #Length 34, not fine

I get the following:

12.0
-:9:in `method_missing': (in setting property `Name': ) (WIN32OLERuntimeError)
    OLE error code:800A03EC in Microsoft Office Excel
      You typed an invalid name for a sheet or chart. Make sure that:

 The name that you type does not exceed 31 characters.
 The name does not contain any of the following characters:  :  \  /  ?  *  [  or  ]
 You did not leave the name blank.
    HRESULT error code:0x80020009
      Exception occurred.
        from -:9:in `<main>'

The version 12.0 indicates that I'm running Excel 2007, but it's complaining that the worksheet name is too long. I had a look at Excel 2007 specifications and limits as mentioned in this related answer, and I couldn't find it mentioning any such limit. (Trying to rename a worksheet manually suggests there may be such a limit, however)

Is there a limit, and is it a hard limit or one that can be changed by changing the configuration of Excel?

excel

asked on Stack Overflow Sep 10, 2010 by

Andrew Grimm • edited May 23, 2017 by

Community

5 Answers

The file format would permit up to 255-character worksheet names, but if the Excel UI doesn't want you exceeding 31 characters, don't try to go beyond 31. App's full of weird undocumented limits and quirks, and feeding it files that are within spec but not within the range of things the testers would have tested usually causes REALLY strange behavior. (Personal favorite example: using the Excel 4.0 bytecode for an if() function, in a file with an Excel 97-style stringtable, disabled the toolbar button for bold in Excel 97.)

answered on Stack Overflow Sep 10, 2010 by

mjfgates

Renaming a worksheet manually in Excel, you hit a limit of 31 chars, so I'd suggest that that's a hard limit.

answered on Stack Overflow Sep 10, 2010 by

Andrew Cooper

My solution was to use a short nickname (less than 31 characters) and then write the entire name in cell 0.

answered on Stack Overflow Nov 10, 2015 by

nikon0iT

I use the following vba code where filename is a string containing the filename I want, and Function RemoveSpecialCharactersAndTruncate is defined below:

worksheet1.Name = RemoveSpecialCharactersAndTruncate(filename)

'Function to remove special characters from file before saving

Private Function RemoveSpecialCharactersAndTruncate$(ByVal FormattedString$)
    Dim IllegalCharacterSet$
    Dim i As Integer
'Set of illegal characters
    IllegalCharacterSet$ = "*." & Chr(34) & "//\[]:;|=,"
    'Iterate through illegal characters and replace any instances
    For i = 1 To Len(IllegalCharacterSet) - 1
        FormattedString$ = Replace(FormattedString$, Mid(IllegalCharacterSet, i, 1), "")
    Next
    'Return the value capped at 31 characters (Excel limit)
    RemoveSpecialCharactersAndTruncate$ = Left(FormattedString$, _
                           Application.WorksheetFunction.Min(Len(FormattedString), 31))
End Function

answered on Stack Overflow Feb 27, 2017 by

Bisker • edited Feb 27, 2017 by

Tunaki

I just tested a couple paths using Excel 2013 on on Windows 7. I found the overall pathname limit to be 213 and the basename length to be 186. At least the error dialog for exceeding basename length is clear: basename error

And trying to move a not-too-long basename to a too-long-pathname is also very clear:

The pathname error is deceptive, though. Quite unhelpful:

This is a lazy Microsoft restriction. There's no good reason for these arbitrary length limits, but in the end, it’s a real bug in the error dialog.

answered on Stack Overflow Mar 29, 2018 by

tbc0 • edited Mar 29, 2018 by

tbc0

User contributions licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0