Excel 2003 puts out an error message when opening a POI-produced excel workbook
which 
- was created from an existing excel workbook file
- contained sheets with PageSetup.PrintTitleRows set and
- one of those sheets is removed from the workbook before saving.

public class TestRepeatingRowsAndColumns
{
public static void main(String args[]) {
    try {
        test();
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    
}

public static void test() throws Exception
    {   
             java.io.FileInputStream fis = 
                 new java.io.FileInputStream("test.xls");
//http://www.mbisping.de/test.xls
             org.apache.poi.poifs.filesystem.POIFSFileSystem fs = new
org.apache.poi.poifs.filesystem.POIFSFileSystem(
                     fis);
             HSSFWorkbook wb = new HSSFWorkbook(fs);
                fis.close(); 
             int sheetCount = wb.getNumberOfSheets();
//removing repeating Rows/Cols before deleting doesn't help              
wb.setRepeatingRowsAndColumns(sheetCount-1,-1,-1,-1,-1);   
              
             wb.removeSheetAt(sheetCount-1);
                
             FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream("testout.xls");
             wb.write(out);
             out.close();
         
    }
}