Whew! Someone else may know another way - are lots of things you can do with
Excel that I've never heard of yet - but this sounds to me like a call for
you to write your own worksheet function in VBA, if you're willing to take
that on. It's not that hard, but if you've never done any programming it
does require learning a new skill. Or do you already know how?

--- "Sum problem" wrote:
I would like to sum a common cell, by defined name, accross a set of
different sheet. The cell name is the same, with a scope to the sheet only.
Example: sheet1!total + sheet2!total + sheet3!total... and so on
I want to be able to do this without having to type in the above, but have
been unable to determine how to get something like the following to work:
Example: =sum(sheet1!:sheet2!,total)
I would be most grateful if anyone can show me how to do this. Thanks.