Thanks Barb, exactly what I want!

I should have looked at Chips site (www.cpearson.com) but it's been quite a
while since I've used excel and it inexplicably slipped my mind. For anyone
else reading this who is not familar with Chips site, I strongly recommend a
visit it is an extremely useful place with some bloody clever stuff.

Does Chip still post to these groups?
What about Thomas? Another very clever bloke!

cheers,
build

"Barb Reinhardt" wrote in message
...
Have you thought about storing them as a named range?

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/named.htm

Scroll down to the Naming Formulas section.
--
HTH,
Barb Reinhardt



"build" wrote:

G'day All,
Is it possible to use variables in formulas without storing them in a
cell?

i.e. (a simplified example)
VarA=SUMIF(A:A,Y:Y,X:X)
VarB=SUMIF(A:A,Y:Y,W:W)
IF(B:B<VarA,VarA,VarB)

looks a lot better than
IF(B:B<SUMIF(A:A,Y:Y,X:X),SUMIF(A:A,Y:Y,X:X),SUMIF (A:A,Y:Y,W:W))

The formula I have is too long and complex therefor would be a nightmare
to
trouble shoot a year down the track. Also storing the variables in a cell
seems sloppy to me.