What you are wanting to do is VERY dangerous. Linking workbooks is
problematic at the best of times since people tend to move the books and or
change the format and structure of the books not realizing that the changes
cause errors in the linked workbook. Your only saving grace when that happens
is that you often get errors showing up in the links. Now you are asking to
hide the errors so that you will never know if the links are corrupted in
some way... I would be inclined to rethink the solution.

In short what you are doing will lead to reports that might be right... they
might be wrong... and you will never know for sure which it is.
--
HTH...

Jim Thomlinson


"blucajun" wrote:

I'm setting up a master worksheet to pull data from various external
workbooks (some of which aren't yet populated). I am using the following
formula to obtain the external data:

='C:\Data Files\Brandi -SALES\Expenses\ExpenseReports\[DR01.xls]Revised
Expense Report'!D38

I've also copied the formula to adjacent cells to pull from any subsequent
files which would be named DR02, DR03, and DR04. The problem is, these files
aren't in the ExpenseReports folder yet (aren't created yet) and it's giving
me the #REF! error in the cell and errors in my total columns (obviously). I
should also mention that some of the files may not ever be created. DR01
would be the first expense report in the month, DR02 the second, etc. Some
months, there may be only one while other months there may be four.

With that said, is there any way to modify the forumla to say -go look in
the ExpenseReport folder for a worksheet named DR02 and if it's there, get
the data in cell D38; otherwise leave this cell blank (or hide the error
message).
I've tried using conditional formatting to change the font for =#REF! to
white but it didn't work (I presume because #REF! isn't considered "data" in
the cell). Anyway, my objective is to keep the spreadsheet from showing
errors all over the page while the data is auto populated throughout the
year. Is that even possible?

Any help is appreciated!