Forum Discussion
Excel formulas not working across multiple sheets
You don't say what kind of data you're tracking, but it may not make a lot of difference. From a purely design point of view, you may benefit from a redesign of your basic method of storing data, a redesign that assembles ALL of the data into a single continuous database. We humans like to record data on monthly sheets, for clarity, ease of finding specific transactions. Excel, though, has marvelous tools to break things apart into monthly, quarterly, annual (semi-annual), (whatever) summaries. The Pivot Table for one can be very effective at summarizing years worth of personal (or work-related) income and outflow. There are other tools as well, but the Pivot Table is a good place to start.
I'm attaching a very simple example of that; I have my own data for nearly a whole decade stored on a single continuous table. Three credit card and three bank accounts.... all income, all expenses by budget category and sub-category. Without any formulas, Excel can produce a monthly cross-tabulated summary for any given year (or more, if desired). That's the power of the Pivot Table working with a single database.
In addition to the link above, if you are new to Pivot Tables you would benefit from the myriad videos on YouTube.