Excel 2003
Since there is no way to refresh pivot tables in a shared workbook, i have
created a second (not shared) workbook, identical to the shared one.
It contains links to all the cells of the shared files and pivot tables
summarising the shared (linked) data.
Later I would like to link the pivot tables of the unshared file back to a
little summary table in the shared file.

My Problem:
The pivot tables of the unshared file should summarise the linked data,
since every cell contains a link (formula), empty cells are counted by the
pivot tables .

I've tried to use If functions to set empty cells empty (if(xy < 0, xy, "")
but the pivot table still counts those cells.
Also, setting the pivot table count to countnum retrieves wrong values,
since some of the cess contain figures and some of them contain text.
Somtimes couloums dont contain empty cells at all.

any idea how to solve the problem? I guess I'm looking for an IF function
that
gives out a value, that is not counted by pivot tables.

thanks!