Thank you all for your replies...I will outline exactly what I...

Thank you all for your replies...

I will outline exactly what I want to do, so you can think about it...

Firstly some background... the Bourse Data program (BDA.EXE) allows you to use DDE to feed certain information about a stock into an excel spreadsheet.

For example, to feed the last price of OXR into a field, you enter the following formula:

=BDA|VAL!OXR_C, and it returns the value. Other codes after the underscore return different values, such as the name, open, high, dividend, etc.

What I want to do is (effectively) put the stock code in cell A1, and the formula in A2, but not have to hard-code the stock code in the formula.

A1 A2
OXR =MAGICFUNCTION("BDA|VAL!"&A1&"_C")

I may have the syntax wrong, but you get the drift.

Then, when I change the contents of A1 to HDR, the magic function re-evaluates the DDE link, and presents the new value. Not asking much, am I? Ha-Ha

Hope this helps explain it all, even if it makes the whole thing more difficult to do.

Once again, thanks for your inputs...