Descriptive statistics and hyphens in file name

[dileepan]

I am using Excel 2007. I have a problem with specifying input range in Data Analysis/Descriptive Statistics if the file name of the Excel file contains hyphens.

This error occurs if (i) the name of the Excel file has hyphens in it and (ii) the data data in a separate sheet and the output of descriptive statistics is supposed to go into a specified range in an already existing worksheet. If I remove all the hyphens from the file name there is no problem.

The error I get when I run the Descriptive Statistics command, if the file name has hyphens, is "non-contiguous input range", if I start the Data Analysis command from the sheet where output needs to go. If I start the Data Analysis command from the sheet containing the data, the error I get is "output range must be valid range". In both cases, after the error, the filename with the cell range in R1C1 format appears in either in the input range box or output range box, as relevant.

None of this happens if I remove the hyphens from the file name. The easy solution is to remove the hyphens from all the files I have already created and working with, but I don't understand why hyphens are allowed when I name the files, but gives an error in this particular situation?

Any idea whether I can have the hyphens in the file names and still not get this error?

Thanks....

[6StringJazzer]

I don't have a solution but I will say that I was surprised when I was able to easily reproduce your error. I am tempted to say this is a bug. I can't see anything about this that should cause an error. File names in Excel references are bracketed so any legal file name characters should not cause problems.