I use Excel a ton and do quite a bit VBA programming in my workbooks. I don't know what I'd do without names. I cant recall the last time I used a raw cell address. It is a nightmare trying to keep track of the ranges and gets exponentially worse when you have a multisheet workbook that has many references to cells on other sheets.
What's the maximum number of named ranges you've used in a spreadsheet? Don't you find the interface for defining names, or viewing them, inconvenient? It's completely divorced from the rest of the program IIRC.
