Hello,

I'm at an early stage of designing a spreadsheet that will be used by staff
to enter their expenses. My aim is that a user enters information into the
file, sends to an administrator who consolidates the company picture.

I can get the user input to appear in the same cells in each file but need a
method centrally to read or open the file, store specific detail into
another spreadsheet file from which we can work on, all this needs to happen
with little intervention from the administrator. There will be about 100
files per week and the consolidation needs to be on those with a certain
weekending date.

I've seen something in Lotus that looked in a closed file and read the
contents of the cell but can't get the same to happen in Excel.

Any help greatly appreciated.

There is no File, Combine command in Excel like in old 1-2-3. Old 1-2-3
needed this because only one file could be opened at a time. But there is
no such limitation in Excel. So, open each workbook and copy from it,
pasting into the consolidation workbook.

--
Jim Rech
Excel MVP

Thanks for the clarity between 1-2-3 and Excel, I could have spent ages
looking.

Are there other ways of getting data in say a known range name from one file
into another without opening the data file?

Thanks, Robert


"Jim Rech" wrote in message
...
There is no File, Combine command in Excel like in old 1-2-3. Old 1-2-3
needed this because only one file could be opened at a time. But there is
no such limitation in Excel. So, open each workbook and copy from it,
pasting into the consolidation workbook.

--
Jim Rech
Excel MVP

It's possible to read data from a closed Excel file using ADO and no doubt
other database techniques. I've never used ADO except to play around with
it years ago. It may be overkill depending on your needs but you can find a
lot of articles on it if you search the MSKB on "ADO", for example:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...73&Product=xlw

For my needs, open, copy, paste, close, works super<g.

--
Jim Rech
Excel MVP

Thanks very much Jim, I'll try ADO as I feel that a 100 files per week needs
to be automated.

Regards, Robert

"Jim Rech" wrote in message
...
It's possible to read data from a closed Excel file using ADO and no doubt
other database techniques. I've never used ADO except to play around with
it years ago. It may be overkill depending on your needs but you can find
a
lot of articles on it if you search the MSKB on "ADO", for example:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...73&Product=xlw

For my needs, open, copy, paste, close, works super<g.

--
Jim Rech
Excel MVP