Excel2003 loses cell references upon pasting

[eti3nne]

In Excel 2003...

I have some numbers in cell a1-a10 say, and some numbers in cells B1 - b10 say.

I have a formula in c1 - c10 which compare the two numbers in pairs ie a1 vs b1 etc. C1 = a1-b1 etc.
Well that seems easy enough....

Now I paste into b1-b10 some new data and recalc to get the new values in C1 - c10. Expecting a numeric value, I am surprised and dismayed to find that cells c1 -c10 show Ref#. !

Upon inspection of the (untouched-by-me) formulae in c1 - c10, I discover that where i have pasted in fresh data (B1 - b10), the formula now says = a1- Ref# !!!, and i have to re-do all the formulae.

This sems to be a new 'feature' of Excel2003 that 97/2000 did not enjoy? There may be good reason for this, but is there at least a setting I can toggle to disable this feature? and does ExcelXP do the same? Will Office12 have this useful feature?

Any ideas?

Thanks for looking.

 

[Lilliabeth]

Don't know what is going for you. I use both 2000 and 2003 regularly and couldn't name 3 significant differences between them.

Where are you getting the data that you paste that breaks the formulas?

The behavior should be no different from how it was in 2000.

What do you mean by "recalc to get the new values?

 

[eti3nne]

Thaks Lilliabeth,

By recalc I mean that i tend to have the autocalcution set to manual.

Data is copied from SQL query result say, and then just pasted into the excel cells.

? Could this be related to my other post regarding excel second guessing my data types?