I am looking for some help before I tear my hair our!

I am trying to put together a spreadsheet which is populated by summary
data from around 50 other sheets. To access the sheets I was planning
on using a string which can be varied to point at each workbook.

I am using Excel 2002 SP3 on a WinXP machine (in case it matters)

My first hurdle was the indirect command not working on closed
workbooks.

After some googling I came across the multifunc addin containing
indirect.ext. Unfortunately every time I use this it freezes excell.

Next step was to try the beta of indirect2 (by the same author), but
again this generated hit and miss results.

Finally i tried the pull function by Harlan Grove, this sounded ideal,
but no matter what I try always returns the #value error. Even on a
simplest possible scenario generated by creating a couple of books with
simple numbers in one and the pull command in the other.

Can anyone suggest alternatives (or why the ones I have tried are not
working) is this just a compatibility issue and i am doomed?

Thanks