Tom,

I think you may have been onto something with the istext and isnumber
functions. However, I have now discovered what I believe to be the cause.

The two spreadsheets were opened in different sessions of Excel and the
reference was to the other workbook including the drive assignment.

When I open the second spreadsheet as a second workbook in the same Excel
session, and do exactly the same changes, I have no problem and no error. I
discovered that when I tried to reference the cell of the second workbook for
the istext function.

Not sure whether the underlying cause was a memory issue or what, but in any
case, my problem is resoved as long as I open both workbooks in the same
Excel session.

Closing off this request for assistance.
Thank you very much.
Charlene LeBlanc

"Tom Ogilvy" wrote:

> I just tried to tell you that the format of the cells is not the determining
> factor. The determining factor is how the value is stored in the cell. You
> can check how with =IsText() and =IsNumber
>
> --
> Regards,
> Tom Ogilvy
>
>
>