Hi Bridger Jeff and thanks for all your comments they are very pertinent and useful to me. There is a 255 characters string limits in XLC, this is the same as Excel's equation limit however there could well be some inconsistencies because XLC does a lot of string manipulating. In your example XLC will insert spaces between operators because this makes equations easier to read but it increases the length of the equation string. It is not an issue I have given much thought to because I have never hit a string limits problem so far. I think XLC's current limit is set above reasonable expectations of what a user might hope to get out of an equation and I can see you are pushing the program to its limits with your test equations. I will give this issue some consideration when I next get to dive into the XLC code - but at the moment I am more preoccupied with packing up for my summer holiday in Tuscany
Thanks again Jeff