Trying to make "xrefs"

[danellis]

I am trying to automatically reference the contents of another file into my main file.

Basically I have one schedule that I've automatically generated in AutoCAD, and another formatted template. The AutoCAD schedule is completely unformated.

I want to include a link to the AutoCAD scheule (a *.CSV file) on my main spreadsheet and have the autoCAD schedule populate my template.

I've done some reading, primarily on here, and I think I need to use either the INDIRECT() or the INDEX() function.

I can get INDIRECT() to work, but it's fairly repetitive (not overly important, but still.....). More importantly, though, the schedule file has to be open, which I would like to avoid if possible.

INDEX(), I just can't figure out how to work!

Any help or suggestions greatly appreciated.

dJE

[JONvdHeyden]

Hi, and welcome to the forum.

The morefunc addin has a UDF called INDIRECT.EXT for linking to closed workbooks. But I don't think it will help to link to external .csv files. As far as I know you cannot update formula links to .csv files when they are closed.

I think perhaps you need to create a query to the file(s). There's a little tutorial here. Then you can simply refresh the query whenever you choose to update the data. See here: http://www.exceluser.com/explore/msquery1_1.htm

Morefunc can be found here: http://xcell05.free.fr/morefunc/english/

[danellis]

Bothy of those look like they could be the answer, thanks very much. I'll experiment later and see how we go.

Expect more questions!

dJE