Consolidation Assistant for Microsoft Excel Description:

The Consolidation Assistant is designed to help you consolidate data from multiple workbooks or from multiple worksheets.Workbook consolidation can be done one of two ways:

Combining worksheets from a list of workbooks

Selecting a set of workbooks and specifying a range name that identifies the data range to be extracted.

The first approach, combining worksheets from a list of workbooks, is a two step operation. First you would run the first option on the above menu and select the files containing the worksheets to be consolidated. This creates a list of workbooks and worksheets. For those sheets you wish to consolidate, type the name to use in the consolidated file to the right of the existing name. The set of names you specify must each be unique. Once you have done this, select the range containing the new sheet names and run option two on the above menu. Blank cells in the selection will be ignored. When the consolidation is finished, you will end up with a workbook containing each of the sheets that you specified.

When consolidating workbooks, you have two choices: converting the sheets to values or copying the entire sheet. The first approach is the one to use if you have range names used in the formulas, and these range names can have different values. Excel by design will use the first range name that is copied into the consolidation workbook. This rang name may not be what you want used for every sheet. And, sometimes it creates local names, so that you end up with the global name used by some sheets, and the local names on other sheets. If you do not use range names in the formulas, then copying the entire sheet allows you to retain formulas that may be of use to you.

The Consolidation Assistant has several features that allow you to better view your data. One freeze panes on all selected sheets. Another sets the same cell on all selected sheets to the upper left corner. And at the same time sets the zoom to the same setting..

Once you have the data consolidated into one workbook, you can use the search through features of the Consolidation Assistant to extract ranges from selected worksheets