Weird Multiplication!

G

Guest

I've just entered into Excel:

=77.1*850

and the answer I get is 100,000, when I clearly shoudl be getting 65,535.

What's happened?

Even if I enter:

77.1 in cell A1 (which Excel stores as 77.1 in number format)
850 in cell A2 ( "" ""
)

And then, in A3, enter:

=A1*A2

I still get 100,000!!!!
 
O

Otto Moehrbach

I get the right answer in XP (2002). Does this happen in every file? Open
a new blank workbook and try it there. HTH Otto
 
R

Ron Coderre

Whoever told you about the Excel 2007 calculation bug should have also
indicated that this is a VERY known issue.
A Google for "Excel 2007 calculation bug" returned almost 2 Million hits.

Of particular interest are the Microsoft confirmation of the bug:
http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2007/09/25/calculation-issue-update.aspx

And the notification that a fix is available:
http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2007/10/09/calculation-issue-update-fix-available.aspx

--------------------------

Regards,

Ron (XL2003, Win XP)
Microsoft MVP (Excel)
 
G

Guest

Excuse me smart a**e but I did not know about any calculation bug, I'm doing
an audit of a worksheet I produced and couldn't understand why I was getting
this. The worksheet was originally produced in Office XP but last week we
upgraded to Office 2007 and it was then that this materialised.

Thanks for the links (which I can't actually access at work) but as I said
your tone is extremely unhelpful. Not all of us spend all day on these
forums or googling 'Excel 2007 Calculation Bug'.
 
R

Ron Coderre

My apologies, Gary....I wasn't trying to be insulting. I was trying to
emphasize that the bug is widely known (and express a bit of annoyance with
people who are happy to point at the bug, but never seem to share the fix.)
It did seem to be the oddest coincidence that the example you posted was the
exact scenario that was first reported to Microsoft in September 2007, as
indicated in an excerpt from the first link I posted.

"Yesterday evening we were alerted to an issue in Excel 2007 (and Excel
Services 2007) involving calculation of numbers around 65,535. The first
example that we heard about was =77.1*850, but it became clear from our
testing as well as additional reports that this was just one instance where
Excel 2007 would return a value of 100,000 instead of 65,535. The majority
of these additional reports were focused on multiplication (ex. =5.1*12850;
=10.2*6425; =20.4*3212.5 ), but our testing showed that this really didn't
have anything do to with multiplication - it manifested itself with many but
not all calculations in Excel that should have resulted in 65,535 (=65535*1
and =16383.75*4 worked for instance). Further testing showed a similar
phenomenon with 65,536 as well. This issue only exists in Excel 2007, not
previous versions."

--------------------------

Respectfully,

Ron (XL2003, Win XP)
Microsoft MVP (Excel)
 
S

Stan Brown

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 08:16:01 -0800 from Gary T
I've just entered into Excel:

=77.1*850

and the answer I get is 100,000, when I clearly shoudl be getting 65,535.

Are you trolling, or did you really miss all the discussions of this
bug a couple of months ago? It was widely publicized, and there's
already a fix on the MS site.
 

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