My bad, I cannot reproduce this so who knows what I did. Senior moment maybe
--
Bernard

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
That would be disappointing if some functions broke in Win7RC1. A major
disappoinment if they continued to be broken with Win7.

Bernard Liengme wrote:

Dave,
I am sorry I contradicted you. My experiment was in XL2007 running under
Windows 7 RC. I tried again on my old PC and got what we both expected -
SUMPROCDUCT does no need the sending file to be open. I will try again on
new PC to see if my example was a bit odd.
best wishes
Bernard

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
Actually, =sumproduct() should work fine if the sending file is closed.

=sumif(), =countif(), =indirect()
won't work with closed files.

But I don't have a guess why the OP is getting the error message.

I know that when I do this, I build the formula with the sending
workbooks
open
and then close those files when the formulas are working ok. (I'll let
excel do
the heavy lifting and adjust the paths.)

Bernard Liengme wrote:

What you should get when the source file is not open is a #VALUE error
best wishes
Bernard Liengme
MVP Excel

"Fluke" wrote in message
...
Hi

I'm using Sumproduct to count rows that meet certain criteria in
external
worksheets. If the other sheets are open everything is fine. If
not,
then I
get the error 'Unable to read file'.

Can anyone help please? All the files are valid xls files and the
path
in
the sumproduct formula is fine.

--

Dave Peterson

--

Dave Peterson