I'm not sure. Once again, my experience is that EXCEL gets overloaded and
if you save the file and close EXCEL (maybe reboot the computer, don;'t
recall) and re-open the file, all will be well. Perhaps that ctrl-alt-F9
would even do it, just editing the problematic cell equation and then
hitting enter seems to work (just hitting F9 doesn't)

Once again, it's the fear of never knowing if all your spreadsheet data has
reacted to changes. The fix is easy, but only if you know you have a
problem, which is unlikely most of the time.

If I knew the real cause, perhaps I could find ways to avoid putting myself
in that situation.

Dean

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
When you find one defect and fix that, then all defects (found or not
found) are
fixed?

I have no idea why it happens. I've seen posts that have tried the
edit|replace
all thingy and I'm not sure if it fixes it forever or just for some period
of
time.

Dean wrote:

Perhaps, my original question got lost. Once I find such a "defect", all
that I seem to have to do to fix it is to either edit the cell, backing
out
its last character and then putting it back, or close EXCEL (maybe just
the
file and reopen it). I know how to fix it.

The problem is that, a few times a year, I stumble on such. Who knows
how
many times such defects are present? Hence the title of this e-mail is
"SCARY"! I was asking if anyone knew why this happens or what could be
causing it. To date, the problems all relate to macros, manual recalcs,
and
other stuff that doesn't seem to be the case with me.

I don't think I can even save the file and then get the problem to
reappear.
It's quite fleeting - just enough time to print results and hand them to
a
boss or client while they're wrong!

Thanks
Dean

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
Try:
Edit|replace
what: = (equal sign)
with: = (equal sign)
replace all

There have been a couple posts that say that this "wakes up" excel.
Maybe
it'll
work for you.

Dean wrote:

I had this happen before, usually with big EXCEL files. I change some
cells
and a cell that depends on them doesn't change. I have to go into the
cell,
take out the last character and put it back in, and then it updates.
hitting
F9 alone does nothing.

I am not on manual recalc or iterations. I forgot to try but I bet,
if I
saved the file and re-opened it, or closed EXCEL and reopen EXCEL, it
would
probably have fixed it too.

Does anyone know why this happens and if it is indicative of an
unstable
worksheet, or is it my computer being overloaded?

It's really scary! Thanks for your educated help!
Dean

--

Dave Peterson

--

Dave Peterson