A co-worker is getting prompted "would you like to input data" when clicking
on a column or cell in an excel spread sheet that was sent to him from
another vendor.

I cleared the data validation and the formatting within the cells, but that
did not work.

Also, the settings are cell/location specific and not content or data
specific. For example, if a column is inserted, the settings would apply to
the inserted column and not to the existing column.

Anyone have any idea what's causing this and/or how to rectify the issue?

This is an Excel 97 file.