how do you put multiple ranges in a data range?

[michaely]

I want to select a bunch of ranges, and group all of these ranges [individually], but im not sure how I go about selecting multiple ranges in a single data range – heres a picture of what I mean

I want to select a range from row 2-31, 32-61, 62-84. As you can see the range selected is currently the 32-61 but I want to select all three ranges at once, individually

[Lupp]

You cannot. A named range needs to be one rectangular range.

[michaely]

So to select all these 3 ranges individually i’d have to create three different named ranges am I right?

[newbie-02]

workarounds, perhaps some of it applicable for your use case:

1. your selections add to one continous range? you can select 2-84 instead of 2-31, 32-61 and 62-84?
2. you can temporarily select non-continuos ranges by holding strg while starting selection of subsequent parts, not to define them as a range, it’s ‘volatile’, not many operations will work on it, but e.g. formatting and paste will do,
3. you can add a ‘helper column’ where all rows you want in distinct selections get an individual mark, and use that to filter out other / unwanted rows,
4. you can name the ranges individually, and reference those names in formulas, also concatenated, e.g. “=sum(data1; data2)”,
5. it becomes nicely confused once you define data(base)ranges and named ranges with identical names, calc will use the named ranges first and the database ranges if it doesn’t find a named one,
6. may be there is / was a possibility to select ranges on different sheets together,
   and so on …

[Lupp]

It’s not really clear what you mean by “select”.
The tools used for defining and managing “named ranges” in fact also work with named expressions, and such a named expression doesn’t necessarily need to have a result that can be returned to a cell.
Not used by many users every day there are (e.g.) expressions using the infix operators working with references (intersection ! and concatenation ~ of references). They return a Reference in the firts case, and a ReferenceList in the second case. However, there are only specific functions accepting such results as parameters, and the NameBox doesn’t accept them for selection.
The last mentioned usage of results calculated from references wouldn’t cause conflicts, imo. You may file an enhancement bug suggesting to allow for that. I wouldn’t expect much support for it.