Hi Chuck,

> I am having trouble using automation to create the excel 2007 xml file.

I don't understand why you want to use automation to create the XML file? The beauty of the XML format is that you don't need automation and therefore everything is fast. In XMLSS the syntax to define a named cell is

 [Names]
   [NamedRange ss:Name="whatever" ss:RefersTo="=Sheet!R1C2"/]
[/Names]

I don't know the OOXML syntax for that, as for Excel I prefer XMLSS for backward compatibility.