thank you. now it's acting even more funny.

...

okay, so maybe this is how it's supposed to work: you can paste into any cell to start a new table row with auto added formulas. but for my formula to work correctly you cannot add data to the target cells, the orange ones that activate my formula, to start the new table row AND have the formula return today's date. Instead it will do "1/0/1900". so you have to start the new row by adding data to any cell OTHER than the orange target cells, THEN you can add data to them to get the B column formula to work right.

Pretty round-about way so if anyone knows of a shortcut let me know. Otherwise I'll just keep working about it.