Someone else will be able to answer this more definitively, z, but what I can
add is that I've seen the same problem. I concluded at the time that it
depended on which servers the target workbook was on; if it was a shared
server, it wouldn't work, but if it was my own hard drive I had no
difficulty. If you can either confirm that finding or knock it in the head,
let me know; I'm still figuring out what causes it.

--- "zxcvbnm6000" wrote:
I keep receiving a #REF! error when I try to use VLOOKUP to find data in one
document and bring it to another. If both documents are open all the numbers
are fine. However when I close the book with the data I receive the error, or
when the vlookup book is opened it does it. If tell it to update the data
error, if I don't update error. What is weird is I have other documents that
work fine, with the same equation. Please help because I'm lost on this
issue. Happens Excel 2007 and 2010.

=VLOOKUP(A2,'C:\Users\USER\Documents\BOOK DATA.xlsx'!Data[#All],2,FALSE)