I have an Excel workbook with two worksheets. In one
sheet (Books) I have defined a series of items with
column 1 being my book Id and column 4 being the book
title. In the second sheet (ISBN) I may have multiple
entries per line of the first sheet, since a given book may
have multiple editions, each with its own ISBN number.

In column 2 of ISBN I have the BookId from the first
sheet, which I have as an absolute reference (eg. the
formula would be something like =Books!R4C1). Now
here's my problem. I'd like to have a column in ISBN
which reflects the book's title that is indicated by the
reference in column 2 (BookId). I thought I could do
something along the lines of
=OFFSET(INDIRECT(RC2,FALSE),0,3) but
INDIRECT is quite unhappy, and all the functions
I remember for dealing with formulas are for macro
sheets (eg. GET.CELL(6,R2C)).

Now I can get the desired effect by doing
=OFFSET(Books!R1C4,MATCH(RC2,Books!C1,0)-1,0)
but this seems computationally burdensome on
Excel, and I have to wonder if there isn't a more
direct way I'm overlooking.


There is a second issue. Using the method in the
above paragraph works, except that when the
returned string has a hard newline (that I previously
entered via Alt+Enter), this is shown as a box
character and no longer shows as a newline.

Any tips?
Thanks,
Csaba Gabor from Vienna