VBA Inactive Worksheets

[tsc35]

I am having trouble referencing a range in an inactive worksheet to feed an vba array. this is the following vba code that does not work:

temparray = Sheets("Raw_Data").Range(Cells(5, 1), Cells(4 + max, LCnum * 6 + 3))

The error I get is:

Run-time error '1004'

Application-defined or object-defined error

It will work if I activate the sheet but I'm trying to avoid that. The code that will work but trying to avoid is:

    Sheets("Raw_Data").Activate
    temparray = Sheets("Raw_Data").Range(Cells(5, 1), Cells(4 + max, LCnum * 6 + 3))