Hi Alex,

Sorry for any confusion! In rereading my post I see that I caused the
confusion!

Formatting the cell containing the DV to TEXT prevents Excel from treating
it like a date. (That's how I meant the line should have read) Formatting the
cell doesn't affect the DV list, only how its items appear in the cell.

As for the solution about the DV Source box contents, I (instinctively)
removed the line of code that strips out the leading ", " from Tom's 1st
example. The Source box is a RefEdit control and therefore behaves
accordingly. Entering Jan 06 and so on causes it to evaluate to data type
"date". I ignored the leading ", " when explaining how my list 'appeared' in
the DV Source box, as opposed to the way Excel altered it after treating the
entry as dates. I should have expanded on that right then, and I apologize
for not doing so.

So, my DV Source box shows this:

, Jan 06, Feb 06, Mar 06, Apr 06, May 06

and my cell drop list shows this:

Jan 06
Feb 06
Mar 06
Apr 06
May 06

without any leading spaces.

Tom's 2nd solution handles the appearance in the DV Source box by adding a
leading space to each sheetname followed by a soluton for removing it if
necessary to use the contents of the cell for reference or value. This is
perfectly acceptable. I just prefer to not put the extra spaces there
initially because then I don't have to worry about that for things like
?LOOKUP() or MATCH(), etcedera.

I treat the leading ", " in the DV Source box as I would using an apostrophe
in front of a cell entry for numbers as text. It serves the same purpose in
concept. The fact that it's visible in the formula doesn't bother me.

HTH
Garry