Thanks for the advice, i will post the same question in the correct
discussion group

"Myrna Larson" wrote:

YOu can't get information out of a spreadsheet without opening it, but that
opening can be done with screen updating off, so the user doesn't see it
happening. As Bernard says, you need a macro to do this.

On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 04:15:02 -0800, westcountrytractorboy
wrote:

We have about 5000 recipes in separate spreadsheets and i have been asked to
compile a list of the recipe names into a new spreadsheet.
I could open every individual recipe and copy/paste the filename into the
new spreadsheet but that will take forever.
Is there a way to tell the spreadsheet to look at the xls files and extract
the info required (the recipe name is always in the the same cell ref),
without openeing the files?

Any help would be gratefully received
Thanks