Vlookup/lookup lastest entry excluding blanks

[dominion]

Hi All,

would really appreciate help for this. I tried searching the old threads which gave me results for getting the latest entry, but i need to look up the latest entry excluding the blanks. For example


A 12-Jan-12
B 13-Jan-12
A 15-Feb-12
B 16-Feb-12
C 16-Feb-12
A
B
C

I need to be able to get the result for A as 15-Feb-12 and B as 16-Feb-12 even though there are blank entries corresponding to A and B further down.
The Answer is =MAX(IF(A1=$A$1:$A$8,$B$1:$B$8)) Confirm with Ctrl+Shift+Enter not just Enter


However, I would like to know how I can do so for entries across two different spreadsheets in the same file?
The code I'm using now is =MAX(IF("Itemname"='2012'!$B$6:$B$250,'2012'!$H$6:$H$250)), i'm looking for the entry in spreadsheet 2012, but how can i include entires in spreadsheet 2011 as well?