First, I've never seen excel do this on its own.

How did you create the link?

I usually just open that other workbook, type = (equal sign) in the formula bar
in my first worksheet and point to that other cell (and let excel build the
formula for me).

Second (not germane to your specific question).

In that payout.xls workbook, you can insert a worksheet to the left of sheet1
and to the right of sheet 5 and use a formula like this in your summary tab (I
called mine First and Last):

=sum('first:last'!c12)

And make sure that only sheets you want summed are between First and Last.

"J Shrimps, Jr." wrote:

Have a summary spreadsheet based on another spreadsheet.
When I copy the links into the summary spreadsheet,
the contents of the cell isn't:
"c:\Exce\Data\[Payout.xls]Summary'!C12.xls"
-the summary worksheet sums the five
other worksheets.
the link is:
"(c:\Exce\Data\[Payout.xls]Sheet1'!C12+
c:\Exce\Data\[Payout.xls]Sheet2'!C12+
c:\Exce\Data\[Payout.xls]Sheet3'!C12+
c:\Exce\Data\[Payout.xls]Sheet4'!C12+
c:\Exce\Data\[Payout.xls]Sheet5'!C12)
This link can get veeeeeeeeeery long.

Why can't the link represent just
the one cell from the Summary sheet?
The values are correct, but I don't need
to know that the link is based on five
supporting worksheets within the
same spreadsheet.

--

Dave Peterson