Copying an empty cell is kind of a kludge but it sounds like a reasonable method to circumvent the problem.  Thank you.

The reason that I copy the first spreadsheet is a little complicated but:

Spreadsheet "A" is actually a dbf file and I don't want to modify it in any manner.  That would mess up the database program that uses it.  When I open it in Excel one column has a letter that needs to be a text item but when I open it it isn't.  By copying it for some reason that column becomes a text letter which I use in a sumif function.

It's a bank account database and I like to check the balance without running the accounting program on another computer.