Quote Originally Posted by jeffreybrown View Post
A great way to sum across all sheets is too create two sheets, one called first and one called Last.

Now put everything in-between those two sheets and use...

=SUM(First:Last!A1)
@jeffreybrown

That was the exact thing I was hoping to avoid. For the sake of tidiness, I don't want to create superfluous sheets like this, even if they can be hidden and kept out of the way, because my formulas rely on strict, self-explanatory naming conventions in order to be user-friendly for both Excel novices and experts. I'm almost more interested in why this behaviour occurs in the first place as there are many obvious workarounds but I'd like to keep the solution direct.

@popipipo

As for the single quotes, Excel is accounting for those automatically with copied sheets without me manually adjusting the formulas. If Sheet2 and Sheet3 are copied, the A2 cell will then reflect "5" for totaling the five worksheets. The issue is simply when Sheet1 is copied the sum formula worksheet references are completely destroyed for reasons I don't understand.

Thanks for your responses.