[excel] How do I reference a cell within excel named range?

To read a particular date from range EJ_PAYDATES_2021 (index is next to the last "1")

=INDEX(PayDates.xlsx!EJ_PAYDATES_2021,1,1)  // Jan
=INDEX(PayDates.xlsx!EJ_PAYDATES_2021,2,1)  // Feb
=INDEX(PayDates.xlsx!EJ_PAYDATES_2021,3,1)  // Mar

This allows reading a particular element of a range [0] etc from another spreadsheet file. Target file need not be open. Range in the above example is named EJ_PAYDATES_2021, with one element for each month contained within that range.

Took me a while to parse this out, but it works, and is the answer to the question asked above.