mulitple formulas linking to a different workbook efficiently?

[collexcel]

Hi All,

I have somewhat recently stepped into a role and the person who had the post before me did reporting in horribly archaic ways - that I am trying to duplicate as my company doesn't use pivot tables. I could use some help.

I am trying to build out this template for 2018 to links to weekly data files as the files are saved. Example of the formulas below:

[TABLE="width: 1790"]
<tbody>[TR]
[TD]=IF(ISERROR(SUM('S:\XXX\XXX\Weekly Sales Data\2018\[XXX DEPT Y- WE 02-10-18.xlsx]1262_1400_rmspmail_1_12242017'!$J:$J)),"",SUM('S:\XXX\XXX\Weekly Sales Data\2018\[XXX DEPT Y- WE 02-10-18.xlsx]1262_1400_rmspmail_1_12242017'!$J:$J))[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]New files are saved weekly as they come in and I have to update six columns for each week with the new formula and different source locations - i.e. sum column E, sum column J, etc. etc.[/TD]
[/TR]
</tbody>[/TABLE]

First question: Does anyone know a way to easily get the weeks to replace in a formula? I couldn't find a work around so I broke the formula into pieces and concatenated the date into the formula for each week of 2018.

- This caused an issue that I copied, pasted special values however now I have over 300 cells that read the formula written out.

- When I click in the cell and then click out again, the text will disappear and it becomes a functioning formula

Second question:

Is there an easier way to make these cells all formulas than having to click each one individually?? I tried replace "=" with "=" but it still prompts me to replace one at a time even if I click replace all. I also have tried text to columns because I saw someone suggested to delineate by tab but I do not have this issue.

Third Question:
Out of curiosity, does this formula make sense to you guys? In all the reporting I've seen he has the formulas duplicated twice (like how the sum formula is above twice) and I just don't understand why that would be rather than just using IFERROR. Isn't this essentially saying if there is an error return 0, but then check again?

Thanks! Happy New Year everyone.

C

 

[Nine Zero]

Answer 1:
I believe a VBA solution will be better for this but will take some time to think of

Answer 2:
See answer 1

Answer 3:
Yes you are correct, this will also work with an iferror like so

=IFERROR(SUM('S:\XXX\XXX\Weekly Sales Data\2018\[XXX DEPT Y- WE 02-10-18.xlsx]1262_1400_rmspmail_1_12242017'!$J:$J),"")