If the sheet is protected (on the Review tab) Trace Precedents will be
disabled. Might be something else of course...

If you really want to know why MS went with the ribbon...

http://msstudios.vo.llnwd.net/o21/mi..._WMVs/UX09.wmv

I got this link from http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/

--
Jim
"Bill" wrote in message
...
|I don't know what's wrong. it's a simple spreadsheet. I love that MS
makes
| something easy difficult. If anyone knows how to enable this on simple
| spreadsheets that would be great, if you also have some idea why I had to
| waste a bunch of time finding out how to do something that was completely
| easy in 2003 that would be even cooler. It would give me some idea how to
| think about these things in 2007. oh yes I saved the spreadsheet from an
xls
| to xlsx and reopened it to get out of compatibility mode.