Hello everyone,

I'm a relative novice in terms of Excel and I have a problem that I
hope someone can help with.

I'm basically using a SUMIF formula (in book1) to calculate a total
using data from book2.

e.g.

SUMIF ('[book2.xls]sheet'!$A$1:$A$1000, B1 ,
'[book2.xls]sheet'!$J$1:$J$1000)

i.e. the formula will sum the values in column 'J' where the search
criteria is satisfied.

The problem is that I want to vary the value range to use for the
totalling so that in the formula the reference to column 'J' is
replaced by a value that is stored in (e.g.) cell 'L1'. In that way I'm
hoping to allow the value of cell 'L1' to control which data is used
for totalling.

Any offers?