Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 31, 2025)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365
Sunlim noted that when Office is installed, the user specifies their name. This name can be accessed in some Office programs, such as in Word. Sunlim wonders how he can access the user's name in Excel and place that name in a cell.
The way to do this is to implement a short, one-line macro that accesses the UserName property of the Application object. This technique is detailed in a different issue of ExcelTips:
https://excelribbon.tips.net/T009814
That approach is great at determining the user name associated with the current installation of Excel. However, that may not be the same thing as who is using the current workbook. For instance, if the workbook is shared, it is possible that multiple people could be using it at the same time. In that case, you need a way to determine those names, as shown here:
Function UserNames() As String Dim Users As Variant Dim sMsg As String Dim iIndex As Integer Users = ActiveWorkbook.UserStatus For iIndex = 1 To UBound(Users, 1) sMsg = Users(iIndex, 1) & vbLf Next iIndex 'remove final line feed sMsg = Left(sMsg, Len(sMsg) - 1) UserNames = sMsg End Function
To use the function, just enter the following formula in the cell where you want the names to appear:
=UserNames()
If you instead want to know who is using the computer currently, it is best to look beyond Office and instead grab the name from Windows itself. In that way you can determine who is logged in to Windows and use that as the user name. This takes an API function call declaration, but is otherwise relatively easy:
Private Declare Function GetUserName Lib "advapi32.dll" _ Alias "GetUserNameA" (ByVal lpBuffer As String, nSize _ As Long) As Long Function UserName2() As String Dim strBuff As String * 100 Dim lngBuffLen As Long lngBuffLen = 100 GetUserName strBuff, lngBuffLen UserName2 = Left(strBuff, lngBuffLen - 1) End Function
Note:
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (12745) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Inserting the User's Name in a Cell.
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2025-05-31 15:22:03
J. Woolley
My Excel Toolbox includes the following dynamic array function:
=ListUserStatus([SkipHeader])
Login name, last activity (date/time), and type (exclusive/shared) are listed in 3 columns for each user that has the active workbook open. If SkipHeader is FALSE (default), the first row will be a header (User, Last Activity, Type).
This formula will list the login name of the Nth user who currently has the formula cell's workbook open:
=INDEX(ListUserStatus(TRUE), N, 1)
Make N equal to 1 for the first (or only) user.
See https://sites.google.com/view/MyExcelToolbox/
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