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Old 09-30-2017, 07:52 PM
sbinder sbinder is offline Windows 10 Office 2016
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Question Pulling data from other files whose paths change

Trying to invent something that will earn me a few points at work, but I'm baffled about how to populate cells from another spreadsheet.

I work in construction, and we manage most of our jobs using Excel. We have a template folder "tree" that has subfolders and files used for everything from estimates to PO's to drawings. We have a template that is generic, and when we start a new job, we copy it and name the base folder using the job name. So basically, all the subfolders and files inside are generic - the only thing that changes is the base job name folder. Like this:

-ABC Cinema
......-Estimates
...........-Drawings
...............drawing.xlsx
......-POs
...........-Major PO
.................subcontractor.xlsx

And so on. The problem is that each of these spreadsheet files has a bunch of fields that are common to most of the files in this tree. So we end up entering the same information over and over again as we use each of the files for this job. My intent is to create a source spreadsheet (right in the job name folder) that has all the common data such as company names, addresses, dates, etc in one place, and then when each of other files are accessed, they are populated automatically. I know how to pull data from one spreadsheet to another, but I don't know how to do it when the network path of the source file changes (each time a new job tree is copied). Can anyone tell me if this is possible, and if so, how to do it? Thanks...
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