Thank you again for assisting me. I checked events and code and could see
no reason for this problem other than an application level issue.
I then tried (carefully) copying formats, formulas and data into a new
sheet. I renamed the troublesome one "x_old" and renamed the new sheet "x".
The phenomenon has not moved across to this new sheet and all is now
restored to expected function.

I do appreciate you taking the time to guide me. I have learned to not
"fiddle" with new (to me) features in Excel in an important spreadsheet.

sincerely

Jeff Smith


"Tom Ogilvy" wrote in message
...
I can't say for certain, but traveling to another cell upon double
clicking
is a classic behavior when a cell has a formula in it refering to another
cell and you have disabled/uncheck "edit directly in cell" under the Edit
tab in tools=options. That is an application level setting however, but
it is the only thing I can think of that is related to your problem. Do
you have any events coded in the sheets that might be getting involved?
If
you click the protected cell, I would expect this to trigger a
selectionchange event if you have one programmed.

--
Regards,
Tom Ogilvy



"Jeff Smith" wrote in message
...
I am finalising and testing a workbook. One worksheet has suddenly
developed
an unexpected behaviour. This followed me trialing the effect of
deselecting
one of the option settings in the protection dialog box - "allow user to
enter protected cell". When I returned to the worksheet and click a
cell -
regardless of whether it is protected or not I cannot select the desired
cell and the sheet changes to another!. I tried to fix this by
reselected
the option to restore me to where I was before. Alas, I still cannot
select
a cell in this worksheet only, with the mouse (but I can by keyboard)
without being directed to another sheet - the one where most of the
originating data is collected.

Can anyone help? This is a real problem for me.

I am using Excel 2002 with XP OS.

Regards

Jeff Smith