How do I find the Excel column name that corresponds to a given integer? [duplicate]

Answer 1

All these code samples that these good people have posted look fine.

There is one thing to be aware of. Starting with Office 2007, Excel actually has up to 16,384 columns. That translates to XFD (the old max of 256 colums was IV). You will have to modify these methods somewhat to make them work for three characters.

Shouldn't be that hard...

Answer 2

FYI T-SQL to give the Excel column name given an ordinal (zero-based), as a single statement.

Anything below 0 or above 16,383 (max columns in Excel2010) returns NULL.

; WITH TestData AS ( -- Major change points
    SELECT -1 AS FieldOrdinal
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 0
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 25
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 26
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 701
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 702
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 703
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 16383
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 16384
)
SELECT
      FieldOrdinal
    , CASE
       WHEN FieldOrdinal < 0     THEN NULL
       WHEN FieldOrdinal < 26    THEN ''
       WHEN FieldOrdinal < 702   THEN CHAR (65 + FieldOrdinal / 26 - 1)
       WHEN FieldOrdinal < 16384 THEN CHAR (65 + FieldOrdinal / 676 - 1)
                                    + CHAR (65 + (FieldOrdinal / 26) - (FieldOrdinal / 676) * 26 - 1)
       ELSE NULL
      END
      + CHAR (65 + FieldOrdinal % 26)
 FROM TestData
 ORDER BY FieldOrdinal

Answer 3

IF(COLUMN()>=26,CHAR(ROUND(COLUMN()/26,1)+64)&CHAR(MOD(COLUMN(),26)+64),CHAR(COLUMN()+64))

This works 2 letter columns (up until column ZZ). You'd have to nest another if statement for 3 letter columns.

The formula above fails on columns AY, AZ and each of the following nY and nZ columns. The corrected formula is:

=IF(COLUMN()>26,CHAR(ROUNDDOWN((COLUMN()-1)/26,0)+64)&CHAR(MOD((COLUMN()-1),26)+65),CHAR(COLUMN()+64)

Answer 4

Here's Gary Waters solution

Function ConvertNumberToColumnLetter2(ByVal colNum As Long) As String
    Dim i As Long, x As Long
    For i = 6 To 0 Step -1
        x = (1 - 26 ^ (i + 1)) / (-25) - 1 ‘ Geometric Series formula
        If colNum > x Then
            ConvertNumberToColumnLetter2 = ConvertNumberToColumnLetter2 & Chr(((colNum - x - 1)\ 26 ^ i) Mod 26 + 65)
        End If
    Next i
End Function

via http://www.dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2004/05/21/column-numbers-to-letters/

Answer 5

A language agnostic algorithm would be as follows:

function getNthColumnName(int n) {
   let curPower = 1
   while curPower < n {
      set curPower = curPower * 26
   }
   let result = ""
   while n > 0 {
      let temp = n / curPower
      let result = result + char(temp)
      set n = n - (curPower * temp)
      set curPower = curPower / 26
   }
   return result

This algorithm also takes into account if Excel gets upgraded again to handle more than 16k columns. If you really wanted to go overboard, you could pass in an additional value and replace the instances of 26 with another number to accomodate alternate alphabets

Answer 6

This works fine in MS Excel 2003-2010. Should work for previous versions supporting the Cells(...).Address function:

1. For the 28th column - taking columnNumber=28; Cells(1, columnNumber).Address returns "$AB$1".
2. Doing a split on the $ sign returns the array: ["","AB","1"]
3. So Split(Cells(1, columnNumber).Address, "$")(1) gives you the column name "AB".

---

UPDATE:

Taken from How to convert Excel column numbers into alphabetical characters

' The following VBA function is just one way to convert column number 
' values into their equivalent alphabetical characters:

Function ConvertToLetter(iCol As Integer) As String
   Dim iAlpha As Integer
   Dim iRemainder As Integer
   iAlpha = Int(iCol / 27)
   iRemainder = iCol - (iAlpha * 26)
   If iAlpha > 0 Then
      ConvertToLetter = Chr(iAlpha + 64)
   End If
   If iRemainder > 0 Then
      ConvertToLetter = ConvertToLetter & Chr(iRemainder + 64)
   End If
End Function

APPLIES TO: Microsoft Office Excel 2007 SE / 2002 SE / 2000 SE / 97 SE