Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Grabbing a User's Name from Excel.

Grabbing a User's Name from Excel

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated June 19, 2021)

Mark has a worksheet where he wants to record the name of a user, but rather than asking the user to fill in a form, he wants to automatically grab their username from Excel.

The username that a person sets in Excel when first installing the software or when changing the general options for the program cannot be accessed via formula. Instead, you need to use a macro to access the information and then make it available to your worksheet. This is possible through the use of a user-defined function. Consider the following simple example:

Function GetUserName()
    GetUserName = Application.UserName
End Function

Note that the macro does nothing more than to access the UserName property of the Application object. You use this function in your worksheet in the following manner:

=GetUserName()

With this simple formula in a cell, the username is displayed in the cell.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the ExcelTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (9814) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Grabbing a User's Name from Excel.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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