referencing value from a cell that was merged

Quite recently I came through a quite interesting problem working with Excel. It looks as some easy problem, but for some reason Excel can't do it.I have used Excel 2002 and 2007. I have 4 worksheets. Test 1, Test 2, Test 3, Comments. I try to get the comments from the first 3 worksheets into the last one. This is fairly easy task to achieve I simply use "=" and click on the cell that is to be copied. In the case of the first two it works very well (i.e. value is displayed). In the case of the third one there are problems. Comments section is using merged cell (merged few rowns and columns together for more space can't change it due to the layout of the worksheet). When I try to use it in the same way in Excel 2002 it only displays a value "='Criterion 1'!B20" without properly showing the value inside the merged cell. In Excel 2007 it always show 0 whatever is input in the cell. How can I fix this problem? I really need to use merged cell.

Thank you