Creating a Master List from Multiple Workbooks & Keeping formatting

[jennyyoung]

I am thankful I found this forum. I am stuck on something.



I am trying to combine data in 3 workbooks into a master list. Each of our inside sales people have a list of customers and orders they are working on. Status changes all the time and I want to create our manager a master list that will auto update on its own.

I tried the Consolidation feature but that didnt work because it only works on numbers not text.

I ended up just linking a RANGE from each file. As long as new orders are inserted somewhere between the first and last row of that range, it'll update the master.

The problem I am having is they have a color code system with a legend and the formatting isnt coming over from the source automatically.

If I go to the Workbook Connections Properties, there is a section that says OLAP and it has some options that seem to be what im looking for but that section is grayed out.

Can someone recommend a way to gather data from 3 files and bring the formatting over too?