So, just re-downloaded to check. Office 2007. Upon freshly opening, I go to cell b10 (affiliation) and hit the dropdown, and don't see anything. If I look at the data validation it is pointing to "=Affiliations!d43:d1048569".
On the affiliations tab, column D is essentially blank. It could be pointed to column A or E (don't recall which ) and it would start to work, picking up the names, and then being able to track exp etc.