Writing formulas between sheet

[Dave]

I'm having a problem that I've never encountered in my 10+ years of using
Excel. If I begin to write a formula in a cell in Sheet1 and try to link it
to a cell in Sheet2, when I hit Enter the formula ends up entering itself not
in Sheet1 (where I started), but instead in Sheet2. I'm sure this is just a
setting I switched on somewhere. Does anyone know how to turn this off?

 

[Dave Peterson]

I couldn't duplicate this when I tried.

Maybe you didn't start with an equal sign?

How is the first cell formatted--General?

Is the other worksheet in the same workbook--or a different workbook?

If it's in a different workbook, do you have both workbooks open in the same
instance of excel?

 

[Dave]

Thanks for checking. My answers are in caps below.

I use so many shortcuts in Excel that I have a feeling my fingers slipped
and I must have changed some simple setting for how sheets are linked. But
it beats me which one it is. Does anyone have more ideas?

 

[Dave Peterson]

I don't.

Thanks for checking. My answers are in caps below.

I use so many shortcuts in Excel that I have a feeling my fingers slipped
and I must have changed some simple setting for how sheets are linked. But
it beats me which one it is. Does anyone have more ideas?

 

[David McRitchie]

Make a copy of the worksheet and
use the TrimALL macro, it might fix some things,
but if you have anything that looks like a date, it probably
will become a date, which is why you usually use the
macro on a column of data.
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/join.htm#trimall

actual code is in
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/code/join.txt