I've recently been looking into cross-sheet dependencies and trying to write
some code to identify where the limits have been busted (i.e. what's causing
'Calculate' to appear in the status bar so you can go and fix it) but I'm
having difficulty interpreting what MS means when it defines the limits:

8,000 cells dependent on a single area

- I assume this means that any cell (or range?) can only have 8,000 other
formulae referencing it. I can't seem to get Excel to hit this limit though.
What do they mean by an area? And do they mean references to that area or
cells that contain references to that area (i.e. does a formula that contains
2 refs to an area count as 1 or 2 out of the 8,000)?

65,536 areas having dependencies

- I have similar questions about this limit. What exactly does it mean and
how could you count it (assuming you had code able to identify references)?

Additionally, how is this affected by indirect refs (such as
INDEX/MATCH/OFFSET etc)?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Thinqer.