The Kutools solution to this is useless. It inserts the entire file and not a range or specific cells. What a waste. If Kutools wanted to make a useful tool, they could write something to overcome the Index(Indirect limitation, allowing for dynamic content sourcing without writing VBA

I have a worksheet for logging shipments. I want to retrieve the freight costs captured on shipping documents in different workbooks without VBA, whether the workbooks are opened or closed, and have the results returned to my shipping log per the respective shipment. I've manually typed the following path using the "Index" function and it works.

Ex #1: =IF(AND($G5>0,$I5>0,INDEX('V:\Operations\Shipping Log\Argentina\CY 2018\[AR18001_Order# 123456_Customer Name.xlsx]Shipping Document'!$AA:$AA,2,1),0)

The challenge I have is the country, calendar year, log number, order number and customer name are subject to change per shipment. To account for this I used the "Concatenate" function to build the path and replace the manually input information referenced above based on certain fields the user populates in the Shipping Log. First, I tested the "Concatenate" function to build the path and it worked for the consecutive rows. Next, I combined the "Concatenate" function with the "Index" function (to access the closed workbook) and received the text result of the path instead of the value of the desired cell. What am I missing?


Ex #2:=IF(AND($G5>0,$I5>0,INDEX(CONCATENATE("'V:\Operations\Shipping Log\",$C5,"\","CY 20",SUM($JK$2:$NG$2),"\","[",$D5,"_",$I5,"_",$G5,".xlsx]Shipping Document'!$AA:AA,2,1),0)"),"")

$C5 retrieves the country

$JK$2:$NG$2 retrieves the suffix of the calendar year

$D5 retrieves the shipping log number

$I5 retrieves the order number

$G5 retrieves the customer name

AA2 houses the desired value


I also tried "VLOOKUP" function instead of "Index" but received a "#VALUE!" error message.


Ex #3: =IF(AND($G5>0,$I5>0,VLOOKUP("Freight",(CONCATENATE("'V:\Operations\Shipping Log\",$C5,"\","CY 20",SUM($JK$2:$NG$2),"\","[",$D5,"_",$I5,"_",$G5,".xlsx]Shipping Document'!$AA:$AA"),2,FALSE),"")