John Whitehead via OfficeKB.com wrote...
I would like the Excel spreadsheet to do this. The person I'm trying
to
help needs to take classes on Excel.

You could pull in data with formulas like

=IF(ISBLANK('X:\Y\[Z.xls]SomeSheet'!A1),"",'X:\Y\[Z.xls]SomeSheet'!A1)

Pulling data by formula or copy/paste are your only alternatives.