Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: One formula returns value of the same cell on multiple worksheets
Here’s how one formula can return the value of the same cell address from multiple worksheets. In the picture, you have an expense workbook with five worksheets. Four of the worksheets (named Sheet2, Sheet3, Sheet4, and Sheet5) are set up the same way, with their regional total expense amount in cell B12.
On the Summary sheet of your workbook is “B12″ (without the quotes) in some cell, for this example cell E1 as seen in the following picture. Now, using the INDIRECT function to refer to that cell value in E1, and the ROW function to help refer to each of the four source sheet names, you can enter this formula as seen in cell B3…
=INDIRECT("'Sheet"&ROW()-1&"'!"&$E$1)
…and copy it down as needed. This returns the value of cell B12 in each worksheet.
The trick is simply to plan ahead when you design your workbook to allow for a single formula to do the work of many formulas. And the beauty of this system is, if you change the location of the Total cell on the regional worksheets, such as if another expense item is added, simply modify cell E1 on the Summary sheet for that new Total cell address.
