"Dag Johansen" wrote in message ...
<snip/
What I would love was something like the Tag property, but
on the range. That way, if a user deletes the range
without my knowledge the persisted settings disappear as
well. And I wouldn't need to hide any sheets. And it's
only for programmatic use, the user won't see it anywhere,
leaving it up to me to create some UI for the user to
interact with.
<snip/

It may be possible to use the Comment property available on a range as
replacement for Tag. Stuff your xml in here (there is a 255 max size)
and make sure you hide the comment indicators on Workbook_Open:

Application.DisplayCommentIndicator = xlNoIndicator

Range("A1").NoteText "<data<item key=" & Chr(34) _
& "key1" & Chr(34) & "(Item1)</item</data"

HTH, Thomas.