What did I do?

[SteveGregory]

I copied a small range of cells from someone else's spreadsheet to use as as starter for my own. Two of the cells were used for inputing values which I abandoned and tried to delete. However, when I click on either of these 2 cells or select these cells by moving the arrow keys, an empty drop-down selection box appears and opens. When I move to another cell, the box with the down arrow disappears.

I was able to move these cells. However, the only way that I could get rid of them was by cutting and pasting them into a blank worksheet and deleting that sheet. Any clues?

 

[jmw]

It is never as easy as simply cut and paste or copy and paste as Excel tends to try and maintain a link back to the original workbook.
It need not be that the cells you copied had formulae in them but that they were the output from some other function.
In your case you may have wanted to copy the cell contents which, had they been simple directly entered numbers or text would have been fine but if they originally were input as a function of some other cell or drop down then the link will be maintained.
I have tried this many times and in the end decided that the simplest solution is often to start from scratch.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[cherrypicker]

Steve

Looks like you've also copied the formats from the other spreadsheet which includes cells with validation (dropdown selection box)

To clear, try selecting the offending cells then Data-Validation-Settings, Allow: Any Value,

or reassign the lookup list to your current workbook

cherrypicker

 

[jmw]

You might also try Tools/Options/Calculations and deselect the "Save external Links" tick box.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com