Thanks for the reply Brian.

However I'm trying to teach some simple concepts to some grade 9 students and would like to keep the VBA stuff to a minimum.

I still don't understand why my original idea doesn't work. Have tried to adapt what you have said (.value stuff) and although it allows the code to execute it still has the same problem of adding to cells that are not referred to in my code.

EG if my code says

IF activesheet.cells(8,14).value = 1 then
acitivesheet.cells(2,1).value = activesheet.cells(2,1).value+1
end if

When executed other cells rather than cells(2,1) have 1 added to them.

Thanks again, I do appreciate your efforts,
DCD