On Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:22:57 -0400, GS wrote:

(Excel 2002, 10.2614.2625)
Spreadsheet has ~100x150 (rowsxcols). It uses conditional formatting
to color columns by whether they have a cell that matches that in the
same row of a 'filter' column. To visualize patterns over the whole
sheet, I reduce the column width to 1 (or less). This leaves the
content not readable, but the column colors are visible.

This used to work fine. Recently, when I try to reduce the width, I
get the message "cannot shift objects off sheet".

If I delete all comments, I do not get this error.

If I reduce the number of columns to less than ~80, the error goes
away. However, it doesn't seem to matter _which_ columns I delete -
either left or right, it seems to just be a matter of how many
columns are present.

Eliminating rows does not seem to help, unless I delete almost
everything.

This is not a huge issue; but, I would appreciate it if anyone could
shed some light on what's going on.

Thanks,
G

The problem is with the display real estate of the comments. Make sure
their position is within the boundaries of your visible cols and you'll
be fine. This will change if you resize cols and so must be adjusted
accordingly.

If you wouldn't mind elaborating, what does "visible cols" refer to?
This sheet does not have any 'hidden' cols. 'Show comments' is not
enabled for any cells. (ie, comments are only visible on mouse
fly-over.) The cells in question contain zero, one, or two characters.