MS Excel help

[glock35ipsc]

I am having trouble with a formula to reference a cell in another worksheet on the same file.

I have a budget done in Excel, with each worksheet being one month. The worksheets (I'll call them tabs for short) are labeled like 2008 Budget, Septemberand so on.

I another spreadsheet I have set up for monthly purchase order tracking, I have one tab that lists the total of the PO's for each month. For that, I use a formula to pull the numbers from one cell in each tab, than another to add all those for a running YTD total. The formula I use to pull from the one cell in each tab goes something like =September!J71 . Don't know if this is correct or not, but it works.

When I try to use the same formula on the budget, it does not work. Do I need to do away with the spacing between the words, drop the word BUDGET and make it something like September 2008, or does it all need to be one word like September2008?

I'm not an Excel wizard, so I'm stumped as to why the formula works on one spreadsheet but not another for the same purpose.

Thanks in advance!

[Orange]

I think I follow...
If I do, it is simple (or you were short-handing).
A proper formula for a read across a tab should be like this:
=(Sheet1!A1) - With the parenthesis. Where "Sheet1" here is the tab name I am referencing. Insert your tab name there, and your cell in the place of A1, and voila, you have the right formula. For cell's A1 through A578...
=SUM(Sheet1!A1:A578)

You can reference across external files even in Excel, no big deal.

Now - the easiest way to do this though is just to click the little function button (fx) up by the forumla bar, double click SUM when it pulls up the box, and then go select the cell you want it to look at. If you want more than 1, just keep on picking them until you have them all. It will build the forumla for you.

DLB

[glock35ipsc]

I never knew what the "fx" button did until now, thanks!!!

I was able to rename the sheet names and got this formula to work: =July10!G9 just as typed. But, there were a couple of sheets where that format would not work, and I would get the #REF! thing pop up in the cell.

So I just tried the "fx" button and got it to work, and it uses the formula: =SUM(' June10'!G9) just as typed.

So I guess when one wont work, I'll try the other. Thanks again!

[Orange]

The fx button is the easiest quickest way.
Using it you can just pick what you want and highlight cells, etc. You can click one, go to another tab, click another, highlight a string here, there, and then open another file, highlight some in it, and it builds the formula.

Really no reason to type in the formulas any longer.

DLB