You need not restrict your references to cells in the current worksheet. You can incorporate a reference to a cell in another worksheet; this is called an external reference. You might want to do this if, for example, you had a worksheet for each months accounts and wanted to transfer the totals to the annual return.
To make an external reference:
For example:
[May]E55
will place the value of cell E55 from the file May into the current cell in your worksheet.
Ideally you should ensure that all files between which a set of external references are made are stored in the same directory. This makes the management process much easier, because Fireworkz need only store the leafname in the cell reference, and it is much easier for you to copy sets of linked documents if they are in the same directory.
When you create an external reference by including a reference and its filename in a worksheet, you inextricably link the two documents for as long as the reference remains in the file.
Whenever you open the document containing the reference (the dependent document), the referenced document (the supporting document) will also be opened. In the following case, opening worksheet A also opens B, C and D.
If you are creating dependencies between several documents (eg referring to each of 12 monthly worksheets in an annual roundup), and the documents themselves are each very large, you may want to consider the memory implications of this, particularly if you are running several programs in addition to Fireworkz.
If you open a supporting document, the dependent document is not automatically opened. If you edit the supporting document without opening the dependent document, however, references may not be updated and the link may become confused, for example if you insert extra rows or columns into the supporting document thus changing all the cell positions.
If all the documents are open, references are updated automatically, so if a referenced cell is moved within the supporting document, the reference to it in the dependent document is automatically updated, and the dependent document is modified, so you will be prompted to save it.
Fireworkz tries wherever possible to use only the leafname (the actual name of the file) rather than the pathname when providing external references. You may refer to files in other directories, but if you do you will need to take care when you copy the file to another disc that you take all the supporting documents with it, and you will need to manually update the filenames in the external references. Keeping all the files in the same directory enables Fireworkz to use only the leafname, and so you can copy the files to other discs or directories very easily.
External references can become unwieldy and hard to use. It is always much simpler to use the Names capability of Fireworkz to set up external references. A name is defined for a particular reference, which may or may not be an external reference. When you want to use the external reference, simply enter the name you have defined - you can do this automatically from the names option in the Function selector - and choose the name you want from the list.