Ideas and pointers please

I am writing a workbook that can calculate the weights of steel. There are space issues with the workbook. It will be used in our shop and it needs to stay simple.

I got some good advise from some folks on here. They told me it was a bad idea to use merged cells.

I am trying to write a formula for a trapezoid. I am really bad at using the left and right cell functions. I really want to use these. The way I got the trapezoid formula was to add columns and cells. If I can use a formula that uses the right and left formulas I would prefer this. Here is the formula that I was able to come up with. =IF(LEFT(G22,3)="TPL",((O22*12+Q22 + S22*12+U22)/2*(W22*12+Y22))*VLOOKUP(G22,Sheet2!A:B,2,FALSE)/144*D22,((W22*12)+Y22)*(VLOOKUP(G22,Sheet2!A:B,2,FALSE)/12)*D22)

I have posted the information on my web page for people to look at to verify what I am talking about. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. WWW.MYKALTX.COM

My advice is to abstract that lot into a VB macro.

VB is far easier to read. I have just finished reverse engineering a spreadsheet that (coincidentally) tracked the LME rates for Cu,Pb ,and Al. It was a nightmare - it was full of formulas that were up to four lines long!

Don't create something that will clearly become unreadable in six months time.