Comments on: Binary? Decimal? Excel 2007 finds it all so confusing

Excel 2007 has troubles with multiplication when the result is 65,535--a number familiar to those who've dealt with binary numbers.

[MadKiwi]

"disproportionate population of Microsoft bashers"

On what do you base that statement? Give me the statistics.

Comments like that make me think "Microsoft shill", which, admittedly, has about the same degree of foundation as the comment I'm questioning... almost.

[Shankland]

well, OK, so I made that statistic up

I have no statistical basis whatsoever for the "disproportionate" label, I confess. But I've been reading Slashdot for years, and there certainly is a large quantity of Microsoft bashers and, it appears to me, a larger fraction than on a lot of forums I read. A more neutral venue might not choose to portray Bill Gates with an unflattering Borg eyeball, however tongue-in-cheek that icon is.

[news reader]

How to trigger the bug

To trigger the bug, type this into a cell:

=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.

[KCatRJ]

Bug will carry over to Charts etc

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