First, forgive me if this is convoluted, I may be approaching this in entirely the wrong manner.
I have a varying number of workspaces, one workspace for each project. The number of projects changes over time. I currently provide a "Master Project Summary" of the status of all projects by using a report and selecting a "Project Data" sheet contained in each workspace. This requires me to add every "Project Data" sheet to the "Master Summary" report, but I only have to do that once (at project initiation). The result is a report with project numbers followed by columns for each major milestone.
Separately, we have a "Master Sales Record" sheet of all sales opportunities. Some have become active projects, some are still in the sales process, and some are complete. We would like to pull the project status from the "Master Project Summary" report into the "Master Sales Record" - without having to write a new formula that reference the corresponding "Project Data" sheet for every entry. If vlookup with cross reference could use my "Master Project Summary" report - that would solve the problem.
I hope that make sense below is a graphic of what I want