Oh man...
I simply hate that VBA-stuff. They call it sometimes the programming language for dummies, but I prefer bare C/C++ programming.

About the problems you ran into:
I've executed this macro at my home place (Office97) and work (Office 97 + 2000), both running without problems. The excel problem sounds strange to me because windows should automatically shoots the excel object.

The other one (runtime error) seems to be related to the excel.

Question
What office package you are using

Give me a moment to investigate it. Unfortunately this will be this afternoon since I've a couple of customers looking over my shoulders at work.

Thanks anyway,

EiSl