What do you mean by "... my new formula simply won't give me the dollar
amount I'm looking for ..."? Does the result show an error message, or
the formula, or a totally different value than the one you would expect
? You might have the cell formatted as text (to show the formula), or
the file might be set to manual calculation, but the formula should
work, so please explain in more detail what it is doing for you.

Incidentally, you don't really need the SUM( ) part - you could write
the formula as:

=A1+'May 06'!K13

Hope this helps.

Pete

Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell wrote:
Hi there! Let's say I need to add two cells:
- Cell A1 on the current sheet, called Jun 06
- Cell K13 on the previous sheet, called May 06

The result should be a dollar amount (of last month's totals plus this
month's totals for a total-to-date amount)

If I've understood correctly, the formular is =SUM(A1+'May 06'!K13)

HOWEVER, the May 06 cell is *itself the sum of two other numbers*. This has
the result that my new formula simply won't give me the dollar amount I'm
looking for.

What am I doing wrong? Surely, there's some stupid simple mistake I'm making
here, right? It seems to me I'm just telling Excel " take the two dollar
amounts you see and add them up". Is the fact that one cell is a composite
of other cells the problem? If so, what's the fix?

Thanks a heap in advance!

Carmen