I need to be able to get a date value stored in an Excel spreadsheet (say, C Temp\file.xls) in cell B28, and put that value into a variable to then use it in a VBA module in MS Access. <BR><BR>I ...

You use these functions when you want to find values based on the value in a corresponding cell. Thanks to the newish dynamic array function XLOOKUP(), you now have more power and less confusion.