Sorry to re-open an old thread but this is exactly the issue for me. Is there
a way to circumvent the 255 limit?

It seems to me this is a limitation of reading anything from an unopened
external workbook - a cell reference has exactly the same limit.

It also seems that if you open the target (source) workbook then the full
text becomes available regardless of length.

So one way around it is to cause the target to be opened. It would be nice
to avoid that though.

Andrew