I thought of this over night...

You can use the book analogy but forget about using the books index.

Think of it as the book itself *is* the index. A book is a storage place for
data and INDEX is a storage place for data. A book contains pages numbered
sequentially. INDEX contains cells or values that are in a numbered
sequential order.

Think of the pages of the book as the cells in INDEX.

When you want to find something in the book you look for a certain
page/pages. In INDEX you look for a certain cell/cells/value.

In the book you search the pages for the data that you want. In INDEX you
search the cells for the data you want.

How you search is left to your own imagination based on your skill and what
you're actually looking for.

--
Biff
Microsoft Excel MVP


"Dave" wrote in message
...
Hi TV,
Thanks for your persistence in helping me understand this. The light is
coming on - slowly. I'm still getting my head around formulas that have a
number of functions each one passing their answer(s) to other functions
which
use them as arguments. I know it's all logical, and I can follow them if I
work through it piece by piece.
Thanks again.
Dave.