OT: Excel strikes again!

[Rodger Rosenbaum]

Can you believe it?

And we complain when a calculator can't get sin(89.99999999) right!

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/09/25/excel-2007-cant-do-math-unless-850-77-1-100-000/

[Thomas Okken]

I've read about this -- apparently any calculation that should yield 65535 prints 100000 instead.


I haven't been able to reproduce this in Excel 2000; from what I hear the bug was introduced in Excel 2007.


I suspect, though, that the bug is not that Excel 2007 calculates the wrong result; it sounds more like it displays the wrong number. Can anyone verify -- i.e. what happens when you calculate 850 * 77.1 + 1 ?

- Thomas

[Namir]

Thomas,

My Excel 2007 displays 100001 as the result of 850 * 77.1 + 1.

When I remove the ".1", Excel displays 65451.

I also tried variations of the bug-causing expression that you mentioned, such as '=5*170*2*(19*2+0.55)+1' and still got 10001.

I am less than amused with this bug.

Namir

Edited: 26 Sept 2007, 8:16 a.m.

[Giancarlo (Italy)]

Hi Namir.

Don't wanna keep going at you ;-) but you may want to have a look at this thread:

microsoft.public.excel

Best regards.

Giancarlo

[Chuck]

I just did a few calculations...

77.1 * 850 +1 is not correct, but +2 is.

Also, putting 77.1*85 in one cell, and 2 in another, sums to 65537, but replacing with a 1 sums to 1000001. Way strange.

However, 5*13107 does give 65535, so it is only for particular equations giving 65535. Hmmmm,

[Les Wright]

I have become a fan of the freeware open source OpenOffice suite.

OpenOffice's wordprocessor, spreadsheet, and presentation components look and act a lot like the very expensive Microsoft product.

The spreadsheet product in OpenOffice doesn't seem to have this bug. And, in some very unscientific tests of mine, seems to achieve better accuracy in trigonometrics and some special functions than Excel.

Sometimes you don't get what you pay for!

For folks who want to spend money on software, the Numbers application in Apple iWork '08, whose full price is a mere $79US, doesn't seem to have the MS but.

Les

[Eamonn]

Thomas,

Yes, it looks like some kind of display issue. 850 * 77.1 + 1 displays 100001. However, 850 * 77.1 - 1 displays 65534.

Best Regards,

Eamonn.