One guess is the cell could have underlying conditional formatting CF) set
to say, fill-color white if the cell contains nothing ("").

You could check / delete the CF by selecting the cell
and clicking Format Conditional Formatting
Click Delete, select as appropriate OK out

To quickly select all cells on the sheet with CF
with any cell selected on the sheet,
just press F5 Special Conditional formats OK

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Rgds
Max
xl 97
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Singapore, GMT+8
xdemechanik
http://savefile.com/projects/236895
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"Soother" wrote in message
...
In excel....
When I try to use the "spilled paint bucket" icon
to color the cell backgroud nothing happens. It stays white.