You'd want to use the =indirect() function, but that only works when the
"sending" workbook is open.

But Harlan Grove wrote a UDF called PULL that will retrieve the value from a
closed workbook.

You can find the function at Harlan's FTP site:
ftp://members.aol.com/hrlngrv/
Look for pull.zip

Laurent Longre has an addin (morefunc.xll) at:
http://xcell05.free.fr/

That includes =indirect.ext() that may help you.
Kaby wrote:

="='C:\Temp\[basefilename"&Text(Today(),"yymmdd")&".xls]Sheet1'!$A$1"

This may the direction I want to go--but this one has date as a variant

"Kaby" wrote:

Is there a formula that I can put in a cell that tells excel to match part of
the file name that I will provide for it in an adjacent cell, go into the
file and link the data to the destination file.

Thanks.

--

Dave Peterson