Excel 2003 formulas - Is there a more-readable way to use names in place of literal cell references?

[chrisjj]

I often upgrade the readability of formulas by naming a column (technically as a range) and replacing e.g. =D2 by =Status relying on Excel interpreting the range name as a reference to the current row in that range. (Sad though that formula editing's source highlighting doesn't do the same, instead showing highlighting range rather than cell.)

However, replacing =myfunc(D2) by =myfunc(Status) can (depending on myfunc definition) fail with a VALUE error. It seems the interpretation is AWOL.

My workaround is: =myfunc(INDEX(Status,ROW())) . This defeats much of the readability upgrade.

Do you know a workaround that's more readable?

The best I've come up with is a user function - here(<name>) - which is a lot more elaborate in definition and a lot slower in execution.