Good day. I am using Excel 2002 on Windows XP. I have progressed from much
earlier versions of Excel and as such have probably created some formulas
that need streamlining.

I have several worksheets that control recipes for my ice cream store. The
recipe worksheet itself contains 10 rows that allow for the insertion of
various raw materials to be used in that recipe. As such, each line compares
the price of that item against a master price list in another worksheet.

There are two issues here that I need help with.

The first issue involves the updating of the cells when I open the recipe.
Since the worksheet uses prices obtained from the master price list (another
worksheet), every time that the master price list is modified, the recipe
worksheet complains that the links need to be updated. The master price list
worksheet is updated by exporting the latest item list from Quickbooks into a
new worksheet in the master price list and then running a macro that copies
formulas for price reduction from the existing worksheet to the new worksheet
and then the original worksheet is deleted and the new worksheet in the
master price list is renamed to be the new original for the next update.
This causes the date on the workbook to change. Is there a way to avoid this
issue and cause the links in the recipe worksheets to remain valid?

The second issue involves formulas in the recipe worksheet. Since I must
allow for up to ten items to be entered in each recipe, I use the following
test as part of each cell to keep errors from popping up.

Cell B5 will contain a formula designed to create the cost of using a
designated amount of the item multiplied by the cost of that item.

Cell B5 contains the formula =IF (B5="","",VLOOKUP...........)

Is there a way to avoid using the B5="","" test in the formula to prevent
error messages from occuring in rows that are left unused in a recipe?

If more details would be helpful, please feel free to contact me directly
via email.

Thanks for the help, Danno...