Creating Formulas that Reference Cells in Other Workbooks
One of the strengths of Excel is that you aren’t limited to using cells from the current workbook in your formulas. If you want, you can use data from any other workbook in your calculations. For example, you might have a workbook in which you track monthly advertising sales for your newsletter. If you want to create a new workbook to summarize all income and expenses for your publication, you can do so. By letting you create formulas that reference cells from more than one workbook, Excel makes it easy for you to organize your workbooks so that each workbook holds data about a specific subject. Not only can you find the data easily, you can reference it anywhere else.
After you’ve created links between workbooks, you can have Excel update your calculation if the data in the linked cell has changed. You can also change the cell to which you’ve linked or, if the workbook with the cell to which you were linking has been moved or deleted, you can delete the link and have Excel store the last value from the calculation.
Use Cells from Other Workbooks in a Formula
Open the workbook with the cell you want to reference in your formula.
In the workbook where you want to create the formula, click the View tab.
Click Arrange All.
Select the Tiled option.
Click OK.
Click the cell where you want to create the formula.
Type = followed by the first part of the formula.
Select the cells with the values you want to use in the formula.
Press Enter.
Break Links to Other Workbooks and Convert to Values
Click the cell that contains the formula you want to edit.
Select the part of the formula representing the link you want to break.
Press F9.
Press Enter.
Tip
You can use the techniques here to link to a cell on a different worksheet in the same workbook. Just create the formula and, when you want to put in the cell reference, move to the target worksheet and click the appropriate cell.
Refresh Links
Click the Data tab.
In the Connections group, click Edit Links.
Click Update Values.
Click Close.
Changing Links to Different Workbooks
Click the Data tab.
In the Connections group, click Edit Links.
Click the link you want to change.
Click Change Source.
Click the workbook with the new cell to which you want to link.
