I had to reinstall Office 2000 for my HR manager since Word 2003 wasn't doing
it for her. So now she is all 2000 apps again. She has a problem with excel
now.

Previously, she used to be able to easily link many different external
workbooks into one sheet (she's summarizing many timesheets)--by setting a
cell with an "=" and then linking it to another whole excel workbook. That
link would provide the path to the other workbook. This path would be built
by setting the cell to "=" then opening the other workbook by going to
File/Open and then browsing to the other workbook. Once the other work book
was linked, it provided a path.

Now, we have to have the workbook OPEN before we can make the cell equal to
a cell in the other work book (link it). Even this isn't a solution as the
reference starts only with the document and not the location of the document.
When we attempt to open the other document after setting the cell to "=" the
file/open dialog goes grey and we cannot browse to the other document.

My HR manager has been doing this for years and with this downgrade this
capability has disappeared.

How can we get this back?