Hi Paul,
No, there is nothing in the code of file3 about changing visibility of anything. In fact when I put a hyperlink in file1 directly to file3, file3 is opened and becomes the active window. It is only when file2 is used as an intermediate file, and this file is closed that file3 becomes hidden and file1 the active window. I guess this is excel behaviour (or maybe a bug?). I can understand when 3 files are opened and the "middle" file is being closed that excel doesn't know where to go (apparently it chooses to go to file1). What I don't understand is that one of the remaining files gets hidden.
The solution I'm looking for is how can I force excel to make file3 the active window when file2 is closed. I'm confident that if I can do this, file3 doesn't get hidden.