Hi, Mangus-
Thanks for your response. Here's the long version of the story: as you
may know Excel can generate a "Too many cell formats" error in a
formatting-intensive sprdsht. I've written some code to go thru the
back office tabs of this workbook and reset formats to generic.

Can't explain why, but when I closed Excel and reopened the same
workbook the code runs fine. And you're right, it's too late and I'm
too tired to fuss with it any longer. I'm willing to chalk it up to
some kind of memory... uh... flux capacitor problem.

Thanks again for your come-back!