Hi,

Try this

=VLOOKUP($A1,[test.xls]Sheet1!$A$1:$B$100,2,FALSE)

Notice the change to the second argument - it includes the whole test.xls
table.

The third argument (2) tells Excel from which column to return the matched
value from.

Thae fourrth (FALSE) tells EXCEL to look for an exact match.

Thanks,
Matt

"q5" wrote:

I am attempting to read a lookup value from another spreadsheet. I have a
spread sheet, test.xls which contains string data in column A and numeric
data in column B. I reference that spreadsheet in another spreadsheet,
test1.xls. I want to lookup up the numeric values in test.xls which
correspond to the string values contained in test1.xls.

My formula looks like this:

=VLOOKUP($A1,[test.xls]Sheet1!A1:A100,[test.xls]Sheet1!B1:B100)

I get an error: #REF.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for any help.