Assuming the 8 or 9 is in cell A1 your formulae can be something like this

=SUM($C$5:INDIRECT("$C$" & A1))

"David S" wrote:

I have a spreadsheet that has many SUM formulas that change on a monthly
basis. Instead of manually changing each formula every month I want to
create a reference to pull the row number from one cell so that updates each
SUM formula. For example, change SUM($C$5:$C$8) to SUM($C$5:$C$9), where
changing the 8 to a 9 in a cell outside the report range will update all the
formulas. The SUM formulas are different for the columns, but use the same
row reference. I used to be able to do this in Lotus, but have never figured
out how to do this in Excel. We have Office 2007 software. Thank you for
your help!
--
David S