Linking a whole worksheet to another in Excel

Question

I have two workbooks that have sheets that logically should look identical. I don't want to manually maintain their identical-ness, so I want to dynamically link them (just as you'd do between cells using formulas: "=A1"). I want to link the whole spreadsheet, not just a few cells.

Is there a way to do this without making 238427398729 formulas, thus crashing my machine? Is there a way to say "=sheet2" as a formula defining the content of a whole sheet?

Answer 1

You may be able to use the "Get External Data" feature (depending on the layout of your source sheet)

Steps to create in Excel 2010 (other versions menus are a little diferent)

1. Data tab
2. Get External data / From other Sources
3. From Microsoft Query
4. New data Source
5. Enter a name
6. Microsoft Excel Driver
7. Connect and select source workbook
8. Select required Sheet
9. OK, to open Query
10. Drag the * onto the grid
11. File / Return data to Excel
12. Select Destination

Resulting linked query can be manually and / or periodically refreshed