A copy followed by a paste previously held the relationship to the
originating spreadsheet without having to jump through the hoops we did here.

No. Copy has always been a "relative" process, with Excel changing the references relative to where
the formula is pasted with a few quite notable exceptions:

1) when a cell address is given in absolute mode: $A1, A$1, or $A$1
2) when the cell reference also has a sheet reference: ='Sheet Name'!A1
3) Combinations of the above...

If you are working with existing formulas, you can change all cell references to sheet and cell
references easily. Select your cells with a formula, press alt and drag the selection onto a new
sheet, release it, then press alt and drag them back to where they were origianlly. Then when you
do the copy / paste Excel will keeep the sheet references.

HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP