Can anyone help with DDE linking?

Let me see if I can clarify this:
Simply typing
=abDDE|Bar!'ART;LEVEL'
into a cell results in an active dynamic data exchange feed from the program "abDDE" on the topic "Bar" providing the "LEVEL" on "ART" This formula is similar to the example given in Excel Help under the topic "About using a formula to link data from programs not on your computer"

My problem is that, as far as I can tell, this formula requires one to manually enter the symbol (in this case ART) for the feed to work. So simple concatenation doesn't work unfortunately (thanks for the attempt thought Jerid).

What I'm looking for I think is a work around that will generate a working DDE formula as above for a Symbol several columns to the left.

I am attempting to automate a worksheet which tracks data on approximately 40-50 such symbols at a time. I would like to make it as idiot-proof as possible so that anyone in my office can sitdown and type a series of symbols in a given column and get a live feed for each of these symbols without having to type in or worry about the DDE formula.

Whew... It's a lot less complicated than it sounds, and I have a feeling there's a simple solution.

Does anybody have familiarity with these DDE formulas?

Thanks for your help,
-Myles