Excel tab name length

When I am marking, I use Excel to provide student feedback. This is because Excel adds up. I used to use Word using formulas, but as Word does not have an ability to protect cells in a table, it is far too easy to overwrite the formula (read more on that here). 

So in Excel, I use one Workbook for all student marking for a single assignment, and print each tab to pdf. I upload the pdf to our student learning platform. I have a master tab which I copy as a new worksheet, then enter each student's name into copied sheet's tab. I have a formula in the "Name" field of my worksheet which picks up the name I have put into the tab, and repeats it on the sheet (read more on how to do that here).

Now sometimes I run into a problem: Excel only allows a maximum of 31 characters (including spaces) as an Excel tab name. While usually this is not a problem, with group assignment work a list of names, even first names, can soon add up to more than 31. 

But there is an easy way to check our list of student names to see how many characters they add up to. We simply enter the following counting formula into a blank column on a worksheet which contains a list of the student names:

=LEN(cell)

Where we replace 'cell' with the cell reference we want a character count of, then we key Enter. And if the result is 32 or more, we need to shorten our tab name.

Too easy.

Sam

References:

Microsoft Support. (2024). Count characters in cells with Excel. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/count-characters-in-cells-1be151d7-5b8f-4186-87b9-7b0318583163