Les wrote...
....
. . . Once I set this up and hide my 2 columns,
and I protect the worksheet. *Even protected when I place the formula say
=AA5 into some other cell anywhere on the sheet it still tells me what the
contents of that cell is even though it is hidden. *I dont want the other
person to be able to view the data in my 2 cells but it doesnt matter if she
is aware that there are a few hidden columns. *Perhaps someone out here can
think of a way to do this some other way??
....

This is just how ALL spreadsheets work. You can access the value of
ANY cell from formulas in any other cells.

The only practical alternative would be to use hidden worksheets
either before or after all other worksheets to hold your data. Use VBA
to make your hidden worksheets VeryHidden, which means users can't
unhide them using menu commands. That's not particularly secure. Any
user who knows how to run the Visual Basic Editor could do so and see
the names of all the worksheets in your workbook. Even if you password
protect your workbook's VBA Project, the cleverer users could use the
following udf in a different workbook to get a list of all worksheets
in your workbook.


Function bar(fn As String) As Variant
Dim wb As Workbook, rv As Variant, k As Long, n As Long

Set wb = Workbooks(fn)
n = wb.Worksheets.Count

ReDim rv(1 To n, 1 To 2)

For k = 1 To n
rv(k, 1) = wb.Worksheets(k).Name
rv(k, 2) = wb.Worksheets(k).Visible
Next k

bar = rv
End Function


Just past your workbook's base filename with extension to this udf,
and it returns an array of the names of ALL worksheets in your
workbook along with their visibility.

Nevertheless, very hidden worksheets should be sufficient to hide
information from most users.