Microsoft releases Excel fix but skirts issue
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By
Brian Livingston
Microsoft has released hotfix packages to correct an Excel 2007 error that makes cells that contain values close to 65,535 act as though they contain 100,000. There's still some confusion, however, on whether these hotfixes should also be applied to older versions of Excel and whether they resolve all Excel 2007 calculation errors. |
Apply the hotfix and watch for further news
I reported on Sept. 27 that Microsoft had acknowledged a serious bug in Excel 2007. MS Excel group program manager David Gainer said floating-point numbers near 65,535 and 65,536 were being displayed in the spreadsheet program as if the cells contained 100,000. He wrote, however, that no actual calculation errors resulted.
Windows Secrets contributing editor Woody Leonhard showed in his Oct. 4 column that the problem goes far beyond a mere display bug. In fact, he says, Excel functions such as round( ) and mod( ) produce actual calculation errors that can ripple through an entire spreadsheet. Furthermore, the problem may also affect Excel 2003.
Microsoft this week released three separate hotfixes for Excel 2007 and the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Excel Services 2007. Contributing editor Susan Bradley examined Microsoft's solution and recommends that people who rely on Excel install the appropriate fix as soon as possible. To get the updates, and to read Microsoft's two related Knowledge Base articles on this problem, see the Oct. 9 entry in the official Excel blog.
Unfortunately, Microsoft's KB articles still assert that the error affects only the displayed value and cannot affect calculations. Comments on the official blog also indicate that the hotfixes should be applied by users of Excel 2002 and 2003 who use Microsoft's converter to save spreadsheets in Excel 2007 format. This suggests that the calculation bug also affects the older programs, but the company isn't directly saying so.
Finally, other comments on that blog indicate that additional calculation errors still exist.
I don't believe we've heard the last about this Excel bug. Spreadsheet users who need accurate math should take Woody's advice and install R, a library of floating-point routines by Thomas Baier and Erich Neuwirth — and watch for more details from Microsoft.
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UPDATE 2007-10-18: Baier and Neuwirth are not the authors of R, they are authors of the add-ins known as RExcel, rcom, and R(D)COM, all of which use R. See the Known Issues column posted on
Oct. 18, 2007. |
The Known Issues column brings you comments on our recent articles. Brian Livingston is editorial director of WindowsSecrets.com.
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