Difference between Consolidate and Linking in Excel

[Storyteller]

Hello All,
I've been mulling this one over for some time and I can't quite see the difference between Linking cells and Consolidating.

The net effect appears to be the same. Changes made in one cell is reflected in the linked/consolidated cell.

It just seems to be extra steps to go through the entire Consolidation process when a simple "paste link" would work just as well.

Can anyone help shed some light on this one?

Thanks for all your replies.

Michael

 

[substitute]

As I see it, Linking is a basic mechanism within Excel that can be used for many things. "Consolidation" is a user need that Microsoft have satisfied with a wizard that happens to use linking as one of the basic mechanisms to satisfy the need.

You CAN consolidate manually by writing in the links, but on a large spreadsheet consolidating many sheets it would be a lengthy process. The wizard simplifies the whole thing, especially for inexperienced users. MS have also built some neat extras into the consolidation wizard which can help with documentation and auditing of the sheet.

A similar example is the "conditional sum wizard". This simply builds an array formula, but many people have trouble understanding array formulas so MS put in the wizard to make it a bit easier.