Forum Discussion
how do i get formulas to work through multple pages?
Nathanw24 Forgive me for being blunt, but I would choose a different approach, altogether. Working with monthly sheets that link to a Total sheet for the year is almost never a good idea.
Create a budget template that contains a structured table with all Codes and Descriptions and Amount to begin with in a Budget sheet and another sheet with an empty table (only the headers Date, Code, Description, Amount).
For a new project, fill in the budgeted amounts for the relevant codes and delete the rows with no amounts. Then, as the project goes on, keep track of actual spending in a single table [Date (enter manually), Code (using data validation), Description (using one of Excel's lookup functions) and Amount (enter manually)]. That's the table in the second sheet.
Assuming you are on a Windows system (i.e. not a Mac), you can summarize the budget and spending tables with Power Pivot (Data Model) in a pivot table resembling your TOTAL sheet. No formulas required. Just enter expenditures and press Refresh All on the Data ribbon to get the an updated view of the financial status of the project.
But, if you insist on continuing with the design you have now and given that all the sheets have exactly the same lay-out, you could enter the budget amounts in the TOTAL sheet. Then press Shift and click on the Dec tab (selecting all tabs) and delete all rows you don't want in the TOTAL sheet. The same rows in all tabs are now deleted as well. Click any tab to unselect all. the formulas in the TOTAL sheet are updated automatically.