cell referencing in function

[tiago pascoal netc pt]

 I'm looking for a way to reference a cell from a function, given a row and
a column. the cell function seems to do what i want, but it returns more
information than i want. Is there a way to extract the value of a cell using
the cell function?

 If i could extract the value from a cell using a reference, it would be
fine. For example, this works:

 =isodd(address(row(hlookup("4/2001",1000,1)),column(vlookup("1/2001",1000,"s"))))

but if i try (the horrible hack) to extract the value

 =power(address(row(hlookup("4/2001",1000,1)),column(vlookup("1/2001",1000,"s"))),1)

i get a #value

I'm confused by this behaviour. What i'm doing wrong?

And how can extract a value from a given it's column and row? 

If value supported something like =value(address("a",1))

or even better value("a",1), that would be quite nice. (is there such a
function?)

background:

given a spreeadsheet containg something like

       2/2001 3/2001 4/2001 
1/2001   1    2    3
2/2001   3    3    3
2/2001

i want to fetch the values from a matrix. The matrix address will be found
searching the row and column that have the key i'm searching for.

My line of reasoning, find the intersection of both row and column and then
fetch the correponding value from that cell. Perhaps there is an easier way
of doing? or not even a way of doing.

TIA.

PS. Please respond to me directly since i'm not subscribed to the list.

--
Tiago Pascoal  (tiago pascoal netc pt)               FAX : +351-1-7273394
Politicamente incorrecto, e membro (nao muito) proeminente da geracao rasca.
Recem empossado (engajado) cidadao da republica das bananas.

Black Holes were created when God divided by zero!