Excel 98 problems

Recalc problems Richard Katzman and Dann Cutter both report recalculation errors with Excel 98, when doing summations. The error Richard describes only happens when using Paste Special under certain conditions. Dann claims that the error he found was present in Excel 97 for Windows and apparently has not been fixed. Both readers sent Excel documents demonstrating the errors.

By the way, Woody's Office Watch Tips web page has information on the "Excel Calc bug" and other problems. It obviously focuses on Windows versions of the apps, but it may be worth a look.

Update: Microsoft has an Auto-Recalculation Patch for Excel 97 for Windows, but it does not always work. They plan on coming out with yet another fix any day now. There is a work-around in the meantime. No mention is made of a fix for the Mac version. (Thanks, David Wagner.)

Chart problem A couple of other readers have also reported a display problem (the text looks distorted) that occurs when pasting a chart with rotated text from Excel to Word. Apparently, Microsoft is aware of this as a "long-standing" issue but does not expect to fix it because it is not "economically feasible." (Thanks especially to Bob Williams.)

Percent error? Regarding our item last time about a glitch in the way Excel handles percentages, a couple of readers suggested this is not a bug at all, but an intentional helpful feature. For example, Frank Vaughn writes: "To me, this is the way it should work. If you format a cell as a percentage and want to enter -2%, then you should enter -2.00. If it isn't formatted as a percentage, then you should enter -.02."

Update: It looks like it's an error after all. Here is a reply from the reader who sent the original report: "Here's a great way to see the bug I am talking about: Format 2 cells as percent, 2 decimal places. In the first cell enter .02; you will see this reformatted as 2.00%. In the second cell enter -.02; you will see this reformatted as -0.02%." The bug is limited to negative percentages.