Excel 2007 calculation bug displays apparently wrong numbers

September 26, 2007 11 Comments

A bug has been found in Excel 2007 and Excel services 2007 which appears to calculate certain results incorrectly. In fact, the stored value of the result is correct, and other calculations based on that result will calculate correctly. The only error is in the display of the number, not the internal calculation. This is, of course, still a problem for anyone who is reading the values on screen or on a printout, or exporting them to other programs (see further down in this post).

According to the article on the Excel team blog about this bug:

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.
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Said another way, =850*77.1 will display an incorrect value, but if you then multiply the result by 2, you will get the correct answer (i.e. if A1 contains “=850*77.1”, and A2 contains “=A1*2”, A2 will return the correct answer of 131,070).

So, it is important to note that most calculations which result in numbers near to or equal to 65,535 and 65,536 will be absolutely fine. It is only through some very specific oddities about how floating point numbers work that you will get one of the 12 situations where this bug occurs. If it does, you will have cells that read “100,000″ rather than the correct answer. Anything else in Excel which you base on those cells will be correct.

You can add to them, multiply by them, show conditional formats such as colour scales or icon sets, even draw charts with those values and Excel will correctly handle the real, underlying value and not the displayed one. Macros or external programmatic methods of retrieving the cell’s contents also return the true stored value.

»Read the rest of the post to find out how this bug will bite you»

Filed under Office System Tagged with , , , ,

GPMC will be removed if you install Vista Service Pack 1 (follow up post)

September 23, 2007 7 Comments

As I discussed in a previous post, I thought that the removal of the Group Policy Management Console from Vista when installing service pack 1 was a pretty bad idea. David Overton asked if anyone cared about GPMC being pulled out of Vista with sp1, while others claim it really is a good step for a variety of reasons, and I wanted to follow up on this.

There were various articles announcing Vista sp1, including one on the official Vista team blog which managed to say lots about all the good stuff and conveniently forget some things like the removal of the very useful GPMC, which is only mentioned in the whitepaper (and later reported on by various bloggers and journalists of varying degrees of credibility).
» Read the discussion about why GPMC should or should not be removed by Vista service pack 1 »

Filed under Group Policy, Windows Vista Tagged with , , ,

Use Bitlocker drive encryption for all your data volumes on Vista

September 23, 2007 Leave a Comment

Thanks to a comment by Steve Lamb on his blog, I now find out that you can already use Bitlocker to encrypt volumes other than the operating system partition, you just have to do it from the command line.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn this, and it means I don’t have to wait for sp1. »Read the rest of the article to find out how»

Filed under Security and Malware, Windows Vista Tagged with , , ,

How to make WordPress’ new Tags work with Windows Live Writer

September 23, 2007 17 Comments

Windows Live Writer Beta 3 works really well with WordPress and multi-level categories

Windows Live Writer Beta 3 was recently announced and it works really well. That is to say, it “does what it says in the tin”. Writing well-formed blog posts is really simple, it even downloads styles directly from my WordPress blog and allows to me to do proper previews to see exactly what I will get before I publish a post, even when working offline.

There’s even more rich functionality and interoperability with third-party platforms than you might expect from a Microsoft product. For example, WordPress.com supports hierarchical categories. I find this especially useful as I show my categories as a drop-down list rather than take up loads of the sidebar with lots of choices. Windows Live Writer (WLW) provides me the ability to categorise posts, and to add new categories if I need them, including specifying a parent category so they fit into the multi-level hierarchy. Oh, and it does all this offline as well. This is great, and it’s the sort of attention to detail which I appreciate being in a product I use several times a week.

And now the Bad News: WLW does not support the new WordPress Tags by default

WordPress.com have announced a change to the way they use categories and tags. Windows Live Writer Beta 3 was released before this change and does not know what to do with them, so it does not create any, and removes any that already exist if you edit a previous post. However, there is a way to fix this with a registry change, but I found it caused some instability.

» Click here to find out about WordPress tags and how to make them work with Live Writer »

Filed under Utilities + Tools, Web publishing Tagged with , , ,

Microsoft lost appeal to the European Courts over anti-competitive practices

September 17, 2007 2 Comments

The verdict is finally here. The appeal has been lost, all that Microsoft got out of it is the requirement to have an independent monitor to check it was keeping in line with the court’s rulings. The original verdict of the European Commission in 2004 was appealed to the European Court of First Instance. In the court’s statement about the appeal case, they said:

The Court of First Instance essentially upholds the Commission’s decision finding that Microsoft abused its dominant position…The Court criticises, in particular, the obligation imposed on Microsoft to allow the monitoring trustee, independently of the Commission, access to its information, documents, premises and employees and also to the source code of its relevant products.

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Filed under Industry News, IT legal matters, Microsoft Tagged with , , , ,

Sorting out the complexity of Microsoft Volume Licensing

September 12, 2007 3 Comments

Vijay started a thread on his iQubed blog to which I replied at length, so he split out my comments as a post in their own right. The debate was around whether MS volume licensing programmes are too complex, and take up too much of a business’ time and energy, as well as making it harder for their suppliers and consulting partners to be sure they are giving the best advice. The question posed was “Who Understands Microsoft Licensing?“

Fundamentally, one size simply does not fit all. The particular firewall configuration you create for one client will not be suitable for another with different needs.

Does the manufacturer’s configuration manual tell you which options to choose? Probably not, it tells you how to change the setting, which options do what, but it is down to your experience to match the need to a solution and then implement it.

Generally speaking the licensing programmes themselves are reasonably easy to choose between, if the right questions can be asked and answered. The extra benefits which come with some of the programmes are often not the main reason to choose them, but perhaps these are too often allowed to cloud the issue. I’ve tried to discuss the questions below without getting bogged down in the details of exactly which programme offers what, partly since that will change over time and partly because introducing Microsoft’s own terminology is the fastest way to lose people in this minefield.

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Filed under Licensing Tagged with , , , , ,

Windows Live Writer Beta 3 and dictionaries

September 10, 2007 1 Comment

I thought I should make my last post written using Live Writer Beta 2 one about the new beta 3 release. For the impatient amongst you, you can download Live Writer Beta 3 here.

This is supposedly to be the last of the Beta versions of WLW before a final one is released. There are a few changes over Beta 2, most notably where the program gets installed.

More information about switching dictionaries

If you already followed my post about changing the dictionary to a UK English version you may be interested in this article in which the author has done what I wish I had found time for – a follow up on Graham’s work to find those other language files and perhaps a clue as to the engine being used here.

I’ll do a follow up post about the UK dictionary switch once I have Beta 3 installed.

Spread the word :

Filed under Utilities + Tools, Web publishing Tagged with , , , , , ,

Microsoft Exams free second chance offer

September 8, 2007 5 Comments

Soon you will be able to get a free second shot to pass a Microsoft exam. They have run this kind of offer before and it always seems really popular.

Basically, you register for the deal with Microsoft, which gets you a voucher number. You then use this voucher number when you register and pay for your exam on the Prometric site as usual. If you fail the exam when you take it you can re-register to take the same exam again in a fixed timeframe.

The offer should be available from September 15th until January 31st, though whether that end-date is for the first try or your second attempt is not clear yet.

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Filed under Events, Training + certification Tagged with , , , , , , ,

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