It most certainly can.
You can use a formula like:
=SUM(Sheet.6!Prop.Cost, Sheet.8!Prop.Cost, Sheet.10!Prop.Cost)
where sheet.n is the NameID of the child shapes.
I'm not sure what you mean by child shapes - are they sub-shapes in a group,
or connected shapes, or within a container.

"LMW" wrote in message
...
I'm exploring whether Visio could be used in the following fashion. I
would
like for a parent shape to display the sum of shape data fields within
child
shapes? Is this doable?