Have a look at the INDIRECT function in Excel Help - this will allow
you to do what you are trying to do.

Hope this helps.

Pete

On Oct 2, 9:16 am, david wrote:
Can someone help please - I know Excel can do this because I have done
it before but have forgotten how (I blame my age!!)

I want to have a formula in a cell that picks up the letter part of
the cell reference from another cell.

ie I want to do a countif a cell range equals 1 where the column
letter of the start of the cell range and the end of the cell range
come from two separate cells.

This is so I can modify just those two cells and automatically update
all the formulae in the worksheet.

I am working with both Excel 2000 & 2003

Thanks

David