Why?
A summary sheet can be used to quickly view key details from multiple sheets in a large workbook. A correctly formatted summary sheet can be used as the basis for a mail merge in Word.
How
This morning’s client help call came from a client using Excel to track employee performance reviews. Once the reviews are completed, they will use Word’s Mail Merge feature to generate individual checklists for each employee.
This process starts with a well-designed Excel workbook.
In the example above, there is a summary sheet which pulls the critical information from each individual employee’s sheet. Regardless of the scenario, a summary sheet is frequently used to present critical information at a glance.
Copying and pasting information or creating individually linked formulas is tedious. Instead; try creating a named formula.
=REPLACE(GET.WORKBOOK(1),1,FIND("]",GET.WORKBOOK(1)),"")
The GET.WORKBOOK function is a leftover from the old Excel 4 macro language. This is why the file needs to be saved as a macro enabled file. Even though there is no VBA in it. Finding documentation on GET.WORKBOOK is hard, since Microsoft doesn’t officially support it anymore. But a kind soul has posted here https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2011-macexcel/getworkbook-help-in-macro-language-in-excel-2011/a359708d-b5b7-48ba-8d1e-c4114d4642d2
The GET.WORKBOOK functions cannot be entered directly in a cell, instead you must place them in a named formula. Here is what it looks like, using the Name Manager dialog box. The named formula can be called anything. Here I’ve used ListSheetsFunction as the name.
Once the named formula has been created, it can be used in conjunction with the INDEX function in the following formula:
=INDEX(ListSheetsFunction,ROW())
You can see how the formula captures each sheet name as it is copied down the column. Note (this formula doesn’t always recalculate automatically, you may need to close/reopen your workbook or recopy the formula to force recalculation after editing sheet names).
Now that the list of sheet names is in the first column, you can use that to build the formulas that will give you the summary of each sheet in the workbook.
=INDIRECT(ADDRESS(2,COLUMN()-1,1,1,$A2),TRUE)
In this case I copied the formula into cells B2:E4. Now as the fields are updated in each individual sheet, the summary will update. If new sheets are added, the formulas from the previous row can be copied down.
There are hundreds of formulas available in Excel; the trick is to cut through all the options and find the one that does the job you need done.
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