Let me start by saying that I'm aware of the existence of INDIRECT, but it won't work for me because I have 24 exterior spreadsheets that I'm searching and I don't want to have to open each of them to update data (it defeats the point).
My spreadsheet tracks maintenance requirements of vehicles via excel reports exported from a commercial system. Currently the each tab searches a specified file and essentially creates a copy of the report and uses the data to do calculations, which I use to put together easy to read reports (the commercial software doesn't put things out in an easy to read format). Basically each cell has =if(C:\...\...\...\\[Data file 123.xlsx]Data file Excel Export'!A1="","",C:\...\...\...\\[Data file 123.xlsx]Data file Excel Export'!A1). I know this is a bit clunky but I can't use VBA because of our companies computer administrator has everything locked down.
The problem I have is that when I get rid of one vehicle (the 123 portion of the file reference) and replace it with another, all these links are broken. Several people use this tool that I built and I'm constantly having to fix the links when they break. I would like to have a dynamic list of files in a tab (maybe a named list or something) that is used as the file path portion of the formula. That way it doesn't matter what the file is called, the first tab just looks at the first file on the list and so on.
Is this even possible? I look forward to your extremely creative solutions!
My spreadsheet tracks maintenance requirements of vehicles via excel reports exported from a commercial system. Currently the each tab searches a specified file and essentially creates a copy of the report and uses the data to do calculations, which I use to put together easy to read reports (the commercial software doesn't put things out in an easy to read format). Basically each cell has =if(C:\...\...\...\\[Data file 123.xlsx]Data file Excel Export'!A1="","",C:\...\...\...\\[Data file 123.xlsx]Data file Excel Export'!A1). I know this is a bit clunky but I can't use VBA because of our companies computer administrator has everything locked down.
The problem I have is that when I get rid of one vehicle (the 123 portion of the file reference) and replace it with another, all these links are broken. Several people use this tool that I built and I'm constantly having to fix the links when they break. I would like to have a dynamic list of files in a tab (maybe a named list or something) that is used as the file path portion of the formula. That way it doesn't matter what the file is called, the first tab just looks at the first file on the list and so on.
Is this even possible? I look forward to your extremely creative solutions!
