I have been sent an EXCEL 2003 file that has "calculate" on the bottom
bar (on thier computer and mine), but is not in manual mode and has
been recalculated just to be sure. I will hereaftre refer to this as
"the symptom" and that includes the fact that formula auditing does
not seem to work either.

We have found the following Microsoft note which would seem to explain
it (it does have somehwat over the noted amount of dependencies,
although I'm not sure what "dependencies to unique referecnes" in the
URL below means)

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=243495

but there is other evidence that suggests that this note is overstated
(or misunderstood by us):

The file is only about 5 MB

This problem does not occur on other, much larger, interconnected
files that have over 100,000 trace depedents and over 100,000 trace
precedents

In the problem file, if one sheet is completely converted to vlaues,
it makes no difference in this symptom. However, if one deletes that
same one sheet, the symptom goes away. If one, alternatively, deletes
several of the other worksheets, the behavior finally dissapears but
it takes a lot of them.

Does anyone have any experience with unique characteristics of an
EXCEL file that can cause this symptom?

It would be maajor pain to try to rebuild the connections to that one
major worksheet and who knows if the same symnptoms might come back
anyway, once we did.

Thanks much!
Dean