Hi,
If I understand correctly, your question is mainly concerned about how to pass a string variable into a specific cell, and the syntax should be as following:
%A="Sample1";//Use substitution notation to store the sample ID
col(1)[1]$=%A;//Use the Sample ID string to fill in the first cell in column 1.
I assume your error message pops up because when you pass a string variable to a cell you didn't use the symbol "$" to indicate passing it as a text, if this doesn't help in your case, you may post the script which leads to the error message here and we could try to see if there is a solution.
Kathy
Originlab