Excel Column Letter to Number Quick Reference

Comments

29 responses to “Excel Column Letter to Number Quick Reference”

1. 

   Yolanda Basson
   May 16, 2023

   How do I change the column names back to letters instead of numbers?

   1 2 3 4 5
   2
   3
   4
   5

   But want it to be

   A B C D E
   1
   2
   3
   4
   5

   Reply
   1. 

      Vishal Monpara
      May 16, 2023

      Hi Yolanda,

      You may have R1C1 Reference style enabled. That is the reason, it is showing all numbers. In order to change it, go to File menu > Options > Formulas tab > under “Working with Formulas” section, you will see “R1C1 Reference style” checked. Uncheck this box and you will get all your columns in alphabets.

      Regards
      Vishal Monpara

      Reply
2. 

   Thomas
   March 6, 2023

   Still the most useful reference, since manually computing it takes much longer. 🙂

   Reply
3. 

   Gilberto
   July 7, 2022

   Thank you!!

   Reply
4. 

   holibut
   November 9, 2021

   You can change column name to number by programming. The following is in Python:

   “`
   def getExcelColumnNumber(columnName):
   # columnName as A, AA, ABC
   columnLetters = list(columnName)
   print(columnLetters)

   columnValue = 0
   lettersCount = len(columnLetters)
   for i in range(lettersCount):
   columnValue = columnValue + 26**(lettersCount -i-1) * (ord(columnLetters[i]) – 64)
   # end for

   return columnValue
   # end def

   # test

   getExcelColumnNumber(‘AA’) # 27
   getExcelColumnNumber(‘YA’) # 651
   getExcelColumnNumber(‘ZZ’) # 702
   “`

   Reply
5. 

   Scott
   October 14, 2021

   Thanks from New Zealand. 🙂

   Reply
6. 

   Conrad Graybill
   October 4, 2021

   Thanks! What a timesaver. Just found this for the first after manually calculating the column numbers for VLOOKUP function.

   Reply
7. 

   Dee Roche
   September 13, 2021

   =column() in a column will render the column number

   Reply
8. 

   Mateja
   March 21, 2021

   or you can just make a simple script that takes an input (such as ABD, ABCDEFG, etc) and returns the #

   s, o, l = input(), 0, list(‘ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ’)

   for i in range(len(s)):
   o*=26
   o+=l.index(s[i])+1

   print(o)

   Reply
9. 

   Yoyo At The Beach
   February 4, 2021

   Thanks from the Cayman Islands for this!
   You saved me a lot of time working on my vlookups ✌✌✌

   Reply
10. 

    Jonathan
    December 9, 2020

    Thank you for this! I’ve visited this page many times when working on VLOOKUPs. Total life saver.

    Reply
11. 

    Jameel Siddiq
    July 3, 2020

    brilliant job, I often need the reverse but your table gives me that option as I can just look up the other way

    Reply
12. 

    Dirk
    May 14, 2020

    Thank you, such a simple table but very, very helpful.

    Reply
13. 

    Stephen Allen
    March 13, 2020

    I agree that this is really useful. I have take the opportunity to extend the process to Column XFD – the last in my version of Excel.

    A copy of the VB Code is available at https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6644160098514141186

    Reply
14. 

    Courtney
    February 27, 2020

    Thank you so much! This is so helpful 🙂

    Reply
15. 

    Oj Shrivastava
    February 18, 2020

    Or you can just make quick Mathematical formula based on the position of input.
    eg.
    ABC: 26*26*(A=1) + 26*(B=2) + (C=3) = 731.
    CH: 26*(C=3) + (H=8) = 86.

    Reply
    1. 

       VIPUL JHAVERI
       May 8, 2020

       very brilliant
       thanks to share
       vipul jhaveri

       Reply
16. 

    Martin
    November 28, 2019

    you should stop using vlookup and use xlookup. There you can just reference “CH” instead of 86

    Reply
17. 

    Tim
    November 25, 2019

    Thank you! I ran out of fingers trying to figure out how to reference Column CH in my VLOOKUP. 🙂
    So simple and yet so useful–bless you, Mr. Monpara!

    Reply
18. 

    Vipul
    October 29, 2019

    Thank you. what a time saver

    Reply
19. 

    Nick
    October 25, 2019

    Superb and very helpful reference

    Reply
20. 

    Aditi Bhatt
    August 31, 2019

    Thanks, it helped!

    Reply
21. 

    Ravinga
    April 18, 2019

    Thank you! Helpful

    Reply
22. 

    leonora
    January 25, 2019

    fabulous a real time saver thankyou!

    Reply
23. 

    Andrew Harichandran
    January 23, 2019

    Thank you, Mr. Vishal Monpara!

    Reply
24. 

    Natasha
    January 8, 2019

    Thank you so much for this. It’s such a simple thing, but it’s so very helpful.

    Reply
25. 

    Chris
    October 26, 2018

    Thank you that’s very useful. I use this list everyday at work.

    Reply
26. 

    Katie
    April 25, 2018

    Thank you! The formulas elsewhere online (eg “=COLUMN(INDIRECT(B5&”1″))”) work just fine, but imo it’s a bit more efficient to just use a list sometimes.

    Reply
27. 

    Abhilash Nagkat
    August 16, 2017

    Can you also provide the Column# for column till AAA or so?

    Reply