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Excel 2007 Calculation Bug

Question: When does 850 * 77.1 not equal 65,535?

Answer: When you're using Excel 2007.

A bug in Excel 2007 (and Excel Services) is causing issues around calculated values of 65,535 and 65,536. Calculations that evaluate to the values may incorrectly display 100,000 as the result (although internally, Excel stores the value as the correct result). Microsoft is officially calling the bug a "display" bug (see the link to David Gainer below) rather than a calculation bug. To the average end-user, it doesn't really matter what you call it because this boils down to a trust issue. As in, I trust that Excel always shows the correct results of calculations. The "don't use it until after SP1" crowd is collectively saying "I told you so".

This bug does not affect prior versions of Excel.

Like Simon, I'm a little surprised this issue hasn't gotten more attention. I thought I'd wake up today and see it on eWeek, Seattle P-I, etc. I guess everyone is still busy playing Halo 3. Anyway, here are some good sources of information on this issue:

Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 9:35 AM by hansen
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Comments

Simon said:

Steve

It has finally made it onto theRegister my fave newsite. That is 24hrs after I emailed them though.

It was heavily commented at /. so its of interest to the techies at least.

My main interest is to hear if anyone actually found the bug live in use in the wild.

Had hundreds of views/downloads of the test code, but no feedback so I guess we'll never know if anyone actually suffered. Like you say though, there is an overriding trust issue too.

cheers - Simon

# September 26, 2007 5:17 PM

dmoffat said:

"The "don't use it until after SP1" crowd is collectively saying "I told you so"."

Yeah Steve... but it does amaze me that they don't have more problems frankly considering all the moving parts of a product like Excel.  They have to issue a patch and make sure it's front and center in the first SP.

Dick

# September 27, 2007 9:50 AM

VSTO Tips said:

# September 27, 2007 9:45 PM
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