Binary? Decimal? Excel 2007 finds it all so confusing
Microsoft on Tuesday confirmed a bug in Excel 2007 that can cause it to produce erroneous answers for a particular multiplication task.
Specifically, the problem can crop up when the answer to a multiplication problem should result in 65,535. You fans of binary arithmetic don't need to be told that's 2 to the 16th power minus one, or maximum integer that can be described with two bytes, counting up from zero. So it's a good bet some binary-to-decimal translation is involved in the problem.
A repair is in the works, Microsoft said, without sharing much more in the way of detail.
"We are currently in the process of developing and testing a fix for the flaw," Microsoft said in a statement Tuesday. "Microsoft places a high priority on quickly responding to customer feedback, and we are committed to finding ways to provide a better software experience."
News of the bug surfaced Saturday on an Excel mailing list, and Slashdot picked it up Tuesday. The latter forum, with a disproportionate population of Microsoft bashers, gleefully pounced on the problem.
One commenter said Microsoft's fix will offer a new rendition of the hated Clippy: The fix will trigger the appearance of "an animated sprite of Charles Babbage's head," who will say, "It looks like you're trying to multiply two numbers. I can help show you how to use the Method of Finite Differences to find a good approximation of your answer using only addition and subtraction. Would you like me to bring up a wizard so that we can get started on finding an appropriate power series?"
Another commenter was more constructive, observing that even when the problem crops up, the correct results are placed in a graph.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
Comments like that make me think "Microsoft shill", which, admittedly, has about the same degree of foundation as the comment I'm questioning... almost.
=round(850*77.1,0)
The answer should be 65535, but it will instead show 100000. If you leave out the "round", then it will say 100000 on the screen but actually be about 65535 in memory. But if you use the "round", then the error is present in memeory too.
- Bug will carry over to Charts etc
- by KCatRJ September 27, 2007 2:49 PM PDT
- We dont have all the information on this problem yet! This version of the equation will carry the wrong answer over to charts etc. =ROUND(850*77.1,2)*2
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