Need HELP - MS Excel question

Hi all, got a question but it is a bit difficult to explain. Here goes (excel 97):

Sometimes either formulas, cut (or copy) and paste, or inserted rows or columns result in data (or something) in the row or column all the way to the end of the sheet (apx row 64,000, or column zz or something like that). The only way I am able to break the needed cells out is to copy and paste into a new spreadsheet. Is there some command to prevent this from occuring or to blank out everything but the ‘normal’ data fields?

That is my main question, have one more but it isn’t that important. I have to add data from one spreadsheet to another. At this time I am bringing both into Access to link the data then exporting them back to Excel. Is there a way to do it all from Excel? If so is it better?

The first problem sounds as if you have selected the whole column or row, or even the whole sheet, before pasting. If this is what is happening, just make sure you’ve selected only the cell or range you actually want to paste into, and it should work correctly.

The answer to the second question is yes, you can reference a cell in another file in any formula. To do this, you can type the name of the file (full path) in brackets, or else just use Ctrl-Tab to go to another open file and click on the cell you want to use.

It is much better to bring all the data together into one workbook (otherwise there’ll be a problem when the other file isn’t where Excel expects to find it).

If you just mean that you want to work with data on different sheets, that’s easier. If you’re typing the formula, use an exclamation mark between the sheet name and the column-row reference of the cell you want. Otherwise, hit “=” then use the tabs to go to the sheet you want and select the cell you want to reference. Hard to explain but easy to do!