thanks al - read through it - no simple solution. Never mind automating in VFP, excel program itself seems not to provide the option without a lot of convoluted tricks.

k

>>Is there a way to protect this group of cells - with no edit
>>
>>tnx k
>>
>>

>>oRange = oWorkbook.Sheets[1].range("a2", "b12") 
>>oRange.Font.Name= "corbel"
>>oRange.Font.Size= 12 
>>

>
>Maybe http://superuser.com/questions/109233/is-there-anyway-to-make-particular-selected-cells-in-ms-excel-as-read-only ?