Thanks for the reply.

The problem is not the worksheet name, it's the worksheet (name)
property that Excel internally uses to track worksheets.

You see this in the Project Explorer, for example:

Sheet1 (MyWorksheetName1)
Sheet2 (MyWorksheetName2)
Sheet145 (MyWorksheetName3)

It's the Sheet145 part that I'm trying to control...

You can manually change the (name) property to anything in the
property window, but I can't figure out to change the (name) property
from code or how to reset the tracking number that Excel is using to
assign the next sheet it creates.

Any ideas?