one other thing to check out is the number of files in your temp directory:
large numbers can slow things down

Charles
__________________________________________________
Outlines for my Sessions at the Australia Excel Users Group
http://www.decisionmodels.com/OZEUC.htm

"Nigel" wrote in message
...
Thanks Guys for stimulating the debate, the string pool solution did not
speed it up, it did slow it down in so much that I loaded a large pool as
per MS article and timed the open-extract-close steps which increased, I
then removed the temporary sheet and the process went back to normal
speed. If the limit is 21,000 pool items I guess I reach that at around
700 files the point at which my process as at a near standstill, so I
could save-open and resume maybe?

However I am working on a formula version as proposed and will be testing
that soon.

I will let you know how it goes. Thanks for all your advice.

--

Regards,
Nigel




"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
I'm interested in Nigel's results, too.

I had to do something similar a longgggg time ago. But I didn't know the
worksheet names and had to retrieve more than 3 values. (and not close
to 1000
files!)

It was much, much quicker to copy the files to my local C: drive and run
it
there than to open across the network.

Charles Williams wrote:

Yes, I think you are right ... I would think thats the way to go in this
case (assuming that reading from closed workbooks does not build the
string
table).

(but I still want to know if the magic string table trick works!!!)


My gut feeling is that it would still be quicker to build formulas to
retrieve
just 3 values from each of the 1350 workbooks.


Charles
__________________________________________________
Outlines for my Sessions at the Australia Excel Users Group
http://www.decisionmodels.com/OZEUC.htm

--

Dave Peterson