First, you're positive you're not hitting the F12 key by mistake, right?

If that's not the case, I would suspect that you have a macro that intercepting
the = sign and then showing the file|saveas dialog.

You can double check by starting excel in safe mode:
close excel
windows start button|run
excel /safe

Then test it out.

If it is a macro that's stealing the function, you'll have to do some detective
work.

Chip Pearson has some notes on how to diagnose startup errors:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/StartupErrors.htm

And Jan Karel Pieterse has more notes:
http://www.jkp-ads.com/Articles/StartupProblems.asp

jaydee07 wrote:

Every time I use the = sign in an excel spreadsheet, the Save as box appears.
I do not know why when I enter the equals sign that a save box is prompted
but I do know that it is super annoying and makes entering data a real pain.
I am using Excel 2003. I even tried removing the program and reinstalling and
it sill does the same thing. On any other computer in which I use excel, this
is never a problem. Any help would be great, thanks.

--

Dave Peterson