Look in the helpfile for the function "Indirect" and you should be able to
accomplish this.

=A1
is the same as
=indirect("A1")
or even
=indirect("A" & "1")

so while I don't fully understand your example, wherever you are getting
some formula returned as a text string, you just need to wrap that result
(not the parent formula, just the returned result) in an indirect statement.

HTH,
Keith

"patbarb" wrote:

Is there a way to store formulas as text in a Vlookup table and then retrieve and activate them? For example, below I do a lookup on "Dog" (A1), return the text C1&D1 from the table and slap an equal sign onto the front of it. This does not magically activate the text into a formula, unfortunately.

main spreadsheet
A B
Dog ="="&Vlookup(A1,lookup_table,2)


lookup_table
A B
Dog C1&D1
Log D1
Bog Q1

The result of this Vlookup is the text value =C1&D1, rather than the actual concatenated values of cells C1 and D1.

Thanks!
patrick



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