Comments on: INDIRECT and closed workbooks

By: Will

Will — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 06:51:00 +0000

Hey,

I know this post is coming four years after the most recent, but I'm still looking through the board, so I figured others might be too. I used the pull function with my index (to set the range) and it worked perfectly - i just copied and pasted the code right into my excel sheet. Just make sure you follow the exact syntax (including quotation marks, etc.) as they showed in the example.

By: Billythefish71

Billythefish71 — Wed, 25 May 2011 16:02:00 +0000

Sorry, F1 should have read: =INDIRECT.EXT(A1&B1&C1&D1)

By: Billythefish71

Billythefish71 — Wed, 25 May 2011 16:01:00 +0000

I'm trying to use the INDIRECT.EXT function to return the contents of a cell within a number of external closed worksheets and I'm only currently to return the correct cell contents when the external worksheets are open.

Currently:

Cell A1 holds a static path that will be constant
Cell B1 holds the year half (e.g. 2011-1) which needs to be changed every six months
Cell C1 holds a salesperson name which relates to a spreadsheet file and workbook name
Cell D1 holds the appropriate cell to reference

So my current test cell contents are:

A1: 'D:Commissions
B1: 2011-1
C1: [Fredd Bloggs.xls]Salesperson'!
D1: $B$5

F1: =INDIRECT.EXT(A1&B2&C1&D1)

When the file D:Commissions2011-1Fredd Bloggs.xls is open I get a figure returned in cell F1.

When the file is closed cell F1 returns #REF!

Can anyone offer suggestions?

By: guillaumemualliug

guillaumemualliug — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:26:00 +0000

Alex, I really don't understand what you mean! Are you referencing to external workbook or not? Where is your reference? I only see references to the current sheet. This function must be must more specific.

e.g. Here's two workbooks and the idea. Book1: A1:NameOfBook2, B1:references name from cell A1 to get a value from the other book (NameOfBook2) cell C3. So how to get them there? Must have somewhere text like "'[NameOfBook2.xls]Sheet'!$C$3.....

By: Alex Sheehan

Alex Sheehan — Thu, 06 May 2010 16:12:00 +0000

Sorry guys, I made a mistake in the formula above - instead of INDIRECT($J$2) the correct formula should read INDIRECT($B$2)

=HYPERLINK(VLOOKUP($A2,INDIRECT($B$2),2,0))

Sorry for any confusion!

By: Alex Sheehan

Alex Sheehan — Thu, 06 May 2010 16:08:00 +0000

To follow on from Greg's post above and to clarify what he means for those interested;-
=======================================
Greg says:
August 29, 2006 at 9:53 pm

If a workbook that the INDIRECT function is indirectly referencing is closed, the function returns a #REF! error.

To avoid this error you can imbed the indirect function inside the hyper link function. If you need to perform a sum you can insert it into the value function. The cell can be reformatted to eliminate the underline and font color.
========================================

When an Excel workbook is closed, it cannot be referenced by the INDIRECT function, however as Greg states this can be achieved via an acrimonious HYPERLINK function without having to resort to VBA/coding of any kind.

To give an example;-

If the data you wish to reference/lookup is in cell A2 & the INDIRECT range/table reference is in cell B2, then the following formula will correctly return the data in the 2nd column of the lookup table.

=HYPERLINK(VLOOKUP($A2,INDIRECT($J$2),2,0))

The formatting of the cells containing this function can then be changed to get rid of the HYPERLINK formatting (blue font colour/underlining etc.).

Hopefully this makes sense, let me know if you have any issues

Best regards

Alex

By: Link path change - dBforums

Link path change - dBforums — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 20:19:00 +0000

[...] code or to install an add-in which has the required functionality. Some choices are discussed on this thread at Daily Dose Of Excel including:MOREFUNC.XLL which includes the INDIRECT.EXT [...]

By: Bas Vaandrager

Bas Vaandrager — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 18:37:00 +0000

Here’s to hoping that the PULL function works. This is a feature that really should be supported by Microsoft, if users are going to be able to take advantage of the “big grid” within the still too small 2GB memory limitations Excel 2007 has.

By: Doug Jenkins

Doug Jenkins — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 08:35:00 +0000

Mike - I'm not sure if the range name is the problem since the macro shouldn't run at all if the range name doesn't exist. Maybe the code got garbled in the copying and pasting.

Anyway, I've pasted my file here: http://www.interactiveds.com.au/software.html (GetValue.zip)
which should work.

It also includes a Pull() function from HArlan Grove which works, albeit slowly (at least in Excel 2007).

By: Mike Alexander

Mike Alexander — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:18:00 +0000

Insoo,
Be sure you create a named range called "refrange".

"Refrange is a named range with the following data:
Column 1: Path
Column 2: Filename
Column 3: Sheet name
Columns 4 to x: One or more cell references
Columns x + 1 to (x-3)*2 +4: Blank cells, i.e. the range name must be wide enough to accommodate the output values."