see if the cell is formatted as text. if so, change to general then click on
your cell, hit F2, and enter.

another possibility is if show formulas is on (this can toggled on/off with
Ctrl ~, or Tools/Options/View - uncheck formulas), but I doubt it since your
first example calculated correctly.


"zhj23" wrote:

I have this problem:

Book1 is my source and Book2 is my target. I have pasted the following link
in Book2 which returns the cell value of C10 in Book1. This works fine for me.

'[Book1.xls]Sheet1'!$C$10

However, if I try to change the above statement's cell address $C$10 to
$C$20 (say), it won't link to Book1 C20, instead it gives a TEXT content as

='[Book1.xls]Sheet1'!$C$20

Can anyone help to solve this puzzle? Thank you.

zhj23