in what way did the external reference fail?
The indirect function should work in the reference area
additionally
a cell which will be used to gather the external reference could be used as
the reference for the lookup, it would also be easy to see if the reference
came in properly.

"C Brandt" wrote:

Hi Guys:

I would like to do a vlookup from an external reference. I've done this many
times where the file name of the external reference is known at the time of
developing the macro. This time, the file name will vary from instance to
instance, but the internal structure of the file will be identical and I can
insist that the user keeps the file in the same location as this
spreadsheet.
My first attempt was to develop the vlookup formula on-the-fly using a cell
where the user input the external reference file name. While this worked the
first time, it failed the repeat test.
This sounds like it should be fairly simple, but the procedure excapes me.

Any thoughts,

Craig