And specifically, I went to my Name Manager and added a name "K_LastDirRowActive", then gave it the value of "3". Great. The Name Manager shows a new entry entitled K_LastDirRowActive, shows it has a value of 3 and in the column "Refers to" shows "=3"

How do I call it so I get "3" and not "=3"?

When I try ThisWorkbook.Names("K_LastDirRowActive").Value I get "=3"
When I try ThisWorkbook.Names("K_LastDirRowActive").RefersTo I get "=3"

That does not make a heck of a lot of sense to me, but I am sure someone at MS had a good reason.

I have not touched "names" other than named ranges in many years, I apologize as I suspect this is a rather basic question! I would simply take the darned value and strip the "=" off of it, but I want to use this storage more and best learn to do it right.

Thank-you-