Linking vs Data Consolidation Help!!
 

I've looked through the postings and also thru the office assistant and still
not sure how to do this. I believe the closest would be to link (is this the
correct term?) say 5 workbooks which are password protected on the public
drive into a master workbook which will also be password protected. All 6
workbook has the same 'template', however, since this is for sales tracking,
some workbooks may have only 10 rows filled with data and some may have 30
rows filled. I want to be able to:
- create one master workbook that will automatically update without having
to be opened, with all information from workbook 1-5.
- see the updates in the master; I believe there is a way to highlight the
changes
- is this considered linking or data consolidation
- what kind of category will be fall under? 3d, position or category?
- where do i even start?
- what searches should I be doing with the office assistant to get the
detailed 'how to's?'
- lastly, when all the data from workbook1-5 is linked to the master
workbook, how do I designate which data should come first? ie, I want
workbook 1 data in the first rows, followed by data in workbook 2 etc. Given
that this is going to be an ongoing quarterly workbook, will the master
workbook automatically insert rows to accommodate for the new data, or do I
have to leave extra rows?

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated!

--
SYC