Thanks for the insight guys and multiple suggestions. Now i've got some
thinking to do in order to determine the best way to proceed.

On another front, I need to average several cells (not enough to trigger the
limits discussed above) that currently have nothing in them. I want to go
ahead and set the formula up though. By doing this, I get the #DIV/0! error.
Is there any way to have the result cell just be blank rather than #DIV/0!?
Of course, once some values are entered into the cells it will be a mute
point. But, that could be some time from now and I need to have the formulas
in place.

"Tom Young" wrote:

I'm trying to average the values in approximately 250 non-adjacent cells
(there is no pattern to the cell location).

My first obstacle was the 30 argument limit, which I hoped to get around by
using =AVERAGE (()). In another thread someone referred to this as using
"multiple area ranges."

That seemed to be working fine until about one hour into the tedious process
of selecting cells while holding down ctrl, I get the "too many characters"
notification.

Surely there is some efficient way of averaging more than 30 non-adjacent
cells?? I can't believe that Excel makes it this difficult to do a simple
calculation. Any suggestions? Thanks.