Retrieve a Workbook's Name and Path

Every now and then you might want a cell to return the name of a workbook, or even the workbook's filename and path. With this tutorial, it's easy to retrieve a workbook's name and path.

The three user-defined functions we explain in this section place the name of a workbook into a cell, or the workbook's filename and path into a cell. The first two examples, MyName and MyFullName, do not take any arguments. The last one, SheetName, is used in place of nesting the MID and other functions inside the CELL function to get the sheet name, a process that commonly would require the following unwieldy formula:

=MID(CELL("filename",$A$1),FIND("]",CELL("filename",$A$1))+1,255)

As you can see, this requires quite a bit of typing for such a simple result, which is why we initially developed the SheetName custom function.

To use this user-defined function, press Alt/Option-F11, select Insert Module, and paste in the following code:

Function MyName( ) As String

        MyName = ThisWorkbook.Name

End Function

Function MyFullName( ) As String

        MyFullName = ThisWorkbook.FullName

End Function

Function SheetName(rAnyCell)

    Application.Volatile

    SheetName = rAnyCell.Parent.Name

End Function

Save the function and close the window. The function will appear under User Defined in the Paste Function dialog (Shift-F3).

You can use the functions as shown in Figure 7-8. They take no arguments. The formulas in column A are shown for demonstration purposes only and have no effect on the result.

Figure 7-8. Functions and their result

In cell A4 in Figure 7-8, we also placed the standard CELL function that returns a workbook's name, file path, and active sheet name. The CELL function is a standard function that will return information about the current operating system-in other words, information on formatting, location, and contents of a workbook.