Functions that Can Access Closed Workbooks

Steve notes that some Excel functions can access data in closed workbooks, and some cannot. Every several months Steve needs to pull data from closed workbooks, and as a result he spends considerable time and effort performing trial and error testing until he comes up with a method that works. Since he doesn't do this very often, Steve is continually rediscovering the same limitations of some functions regarding referencing data in closed workbooks. He wonders if there is a definitive list of those functions that will (or won't) allow the referencing of data in closed workbooks.

As far as I can tell, Steve, there is no such definitive list. That is, perhaps, because there are so many different functions that one can use in Excel—well over 300 of them in the latest versions of the program. (And, unfortunately, Microsoft hasn't made any such list available that I can locate.)

That being said, testing has shown that the following functions cannot be used in the way you describe—they won't retrieve information from a closed workbook.

AVERAGEIF, AVERAGEIFS, CELL, COUNTBLANK, COUNTIF,
COUNTIFS, DAVERAGE, DCOUNT, DCOUNTA, DGET, DMAX,
DMIN, DSUM, GETPIVOTDATA, INDIRECT, OFFSET, SUMIF,
SUMIFS

This list is not exhaustive, as not all of Excel's functions have been tested. (The above list was generated after testing about half of Excel's functions.) The flip side of the above list is that the following functions have been tested and will work just fine in external references to closed workbooks:

ABS, ADDRESS, AND, AREAS, ASC, AVERAGE, AVERAGEA,
CEILING, CHAR, CHOOSE, CLEAN, CODE, COLUMN, COLUMNS,
COMBIN, CONCATENATE, COUNT, COUNTA, DATE, DATEVALUE,
DAY, DAYS360, DB, DDB, DOLLAR, EDATE, EOMONTH,
ERROR.TYPE, EVEN, EXACT, EXP, FACT, FALSE, FIND,
FIXED, FLOOR, FV, HLOOKUP, HOUR, HYPERLINK, IF,
INDEX, INFO, INT, INTRATE, IRR, ISBLANK, ISERR,
ISERROR, ISEVEN, ISLOGICAL, ISNA, ISNONTEXT,
ISNUMBER, ISODD, ISREF, ISTEXT, LARGE, LEFT, LEN,
LN, LOG, LOG10, LOOKUP, LOWER, MATCH, MAX, MAXA,
MEDIAN, MID, MIN, MINA, MINUTE, MOD, MONTH, MROUND,
N, NA, NETWORKDAYS, NOT, NOW, NPER, NPV, ODD, OR,
PERCENTILE, PERCENTRANK, PERMUT, PI, PMT, POWER,
PRODUCT, PROPER, PV, QUOTIENT, RADIANS, RAND,
RANDBETWEEN, RANK, RATE, REPLACE, REPT, RIGHT,
ROMAN, ROUND, ROUNDDOWN, ROUNDUP, ROW, ROWS, SEARCH,
SECOND, SIGN, SLN, SMALL, SQRT, SUBSTITUTE, SUBTOTAL,
SUM, SUMPRODUCT, SYD, T, TEXT, TIME, TIMEVALUE,
TODAY, TRANSPOSE, TRIM, TRUE, TRUNC, TYPE, UPPER,
VALUE, VLOOKUP, WEEKDAY, WEEKNUM, WORKDAY, YEAR,
YEARFRAC

Again, these lists are not exhaustive, even though they probably represent the most often used functions in Excel. You could use these lists as a starting point for developing your own lists, adding to them as you determine which ones you need to use in your workbooks.

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