InnerHTML Field IDs And Internet Explorer

I'm developing a web application. Where you are supposed to be able to click on a table data cell in order to activate a script which hides / unides the information. The script works fine in all browsers except IE, I sat the ID for the table data as a string containing the number of the text element. In internet explorer the field modified is not the one it is supposed to modify. I tried to solve this by setting the unaffected data cells to have the name and id #. (assuming that IE auto sets the IDs if unspecified) I also tried modifying the name column as IE uses the name above the ID for the fetch element by ID call.

Code:
function determin_action (field,mid){
var field2 = document.getElementById(field);
if (field2.innerHTML == "...[Click To Display]..."){
expand_field (field,mid);
}else{
collapse_field (field);
}}

function collapse_field (field){
var field = document.getElementById(field);
field.innerHTML = "...[Click To Display]...";
}

function expand_field (field, mid){
var field = document.getElementById(field);
field.innerHTML = data [mid];
} function populate_data (){
var table = document.getElementById("messagesTBL");
var cells = table.getElementsByTagName("td");
var collapse = true;

for (var i = 0; i < cells.length; i++) {
if (cells [i].id == "last_read"){
collapse = false;
}

if (cells [i].id == parseInt(cells [i].id)){
data [cells [i].id] = cells[i].innerHTML;
if (collapse == true){
collapse_field (cells [i].id);
}}}}