Hidden named ranges - how do they occur?

So i've come across a number of spreadsheets over the years where named ranges have been hidden.

I've never managed to figure out how this comes to be but from what i can deduce possibly from very old legacy files - does anyone know?

Also is it possible to hide/unhide named ranges without using VBA?

FYI, luckily come across below useful code from this forum which i run on all files to unhide old named ranges

Please Login or Register  to view this content.

Excel will sometimes generate named ranges, though not usually hidden. For example, if you use Advanced Filter to produce a unique list of values in another location than the source list, then Excel will create the name Extract, which will refer to the first cell of the destination range.

Hope this helps.

Pete

i've noticed when creating printing ranges excel also creates named ranges for these.

More curious on how named ranges that have been created by users in the past get hidden in the first place as it doesn't appear to even be an excel option (ignoring VBA).

Add-ins could certainly account for some of them sure but the majority seem to be user defined named ranges

Excel level of the file users are novice at best (most don't even know what VBA is) and the only add-ins are SmartView which don't generate or hide named ranges as far as i know.

Even if the users had the VBA knowledge to hide named ranges i don't see the point?

anyone else have any insights?