it's got to be there, when it crashes out I can open excel and go to my left open sheet in the windows bit, and sure enough the shapes are there, I open the same template sheet every time, the one with the shapes on it, I save it as a new name, fill in a few cells and make the shapes visible or not for a few prints.

I see what your saying but if that returns false then I'm buggered if I know what to do.

I'm thinking a different way to get that semitransparent copy accross the page or an upgrade of office will have to be tried.

anyone have a good way of putting a BIG diagonal semitransparent (thats important a copy with the values obscured by dithering rather than shading is a bit useless so no halftone dithered graphics) 'COPY' accross an excel sheet without using shapes?

meanwhile I'll try the type test just for the sake of it.