Data validation issues Excel 2010 vs 2007

Good morning.

The large company I work for is running MS Office in various versions. Hardware and software is phased in on a rotational basis, which means MS Office 2003, 2007, and 2010 may be running concurrently. MS Office 2003/Win XP is almost phased out, with a few users on MS Office 2010/Win 7, and the bulk of the users on 2007/Win 7.

A colleague created a macro-enabled spreadsheet in 2010. The GUI for the code includes drop-down input cells using the data validation function found on the Data tab on the ribbon. Everything works fine on Excel 2010. When a Excel 2007/Win 7 user opens the file, the data validation is stripped off, allowing any entry. I've checked the code and VBA is not the problem (I'm a 2007 user) - the issue is apparently the data validation function in Excel 2010 is not recognized by Excel 2007.

Any explanations or suggestions?

Art

I can't give you the exact info (company security issues), but in general, on sheet1, cell A1 has a list of options:

Able
Baker
Charlie....

Cell B1:

Uno
Dos
Tres...

etc.

Each of these option lists correspond to a column on a separate sheet that is called out on the validation screen on sheet2:

'=sheet2!"A1:A10" for cell A1 on sheet 1

Now, my colleague did not name the ranges on sheet2 for each of these lists - he called them out directly. I haven't tried that modification to his spreadsheet to see if it works.

Art

naming the ranges instead of refering to the cell addresses solved the problem

still don't understand why the address callout fails between 2010 and 2007

Art