Dave Peterson wrote

If you use formulas that look like:
=sheet1!a1

You'll see that they return a 0 if A1 is empty.

I like this formula better:
=if(sheet1!a1="","",sheet1!a1)

Then my "padded" range looks empty. This won't change the results of the
macro--you'll see blanks instead of 0's, though.

I opted for this "dirty" fix toward the end of the macro:
Application.Goto .Range("a1"), Scroll:=True
.Range("b2").Select
ActiveWindow.FreezePanes = True
.Rows(2).Delete '<---
.UsedRange.Columns.AutoFit

--
David