M$ Continues Office Improvements

[SiGiNT]

Any of you fortunate(?) enough to have the 2007 version try these in your spreadsheet -

=(5.1*12850)
=(10.2*6425)
=(20.4*3212.5)
=40.8*1606.25
=(77.1*850)
=(154.2*425)
=(212.5*308.4)
=(308.4*212.5)
=(425*154.2)

Hope your payroll dept. isn't using Excel

SiGiNT

[JMI]

Even Microsoft is admitting the "Bug".

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202101900

"Red-faced officials at Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) have acknowledged that the latest version of the company's Excel spreadsheet program -- an integral part of Office 2007 -- produces significant errors in a small number of cases.
The problem also affects the server-resident version of Excel -- Excel Services. "

"Excel team members said the glitch is the result of a floating point error -- the same sort of bug that infamously plagued Intel (NSDQ: INTC)'s Pentium chips in 1994. Put simply, a floating point error occurs when a computer -- or a human -- places the decimal point in a string of numbers in the wrong spot. It's an error common to high school math students."

"The officials said Microsoft is working on a fix for the bug, but has yet to release it."


Regards,

[SiGiNT]

I wonder if it was coded in China

S

[SiGiNT]

Quote:

[Originally Posted by JMI;68881]Put simply, a floating point error occurs when a computer -- or a human -- places the decimal point in a string of numbers in the wrong spot. It's an error common to high school math students."

HUH????????

[JMI]

Well, see if it works correctly if entered from "right to left in vertical columns."

The "Administration" takes no responsibility for "quotes" eminating out of Redmond.


Regards,

[LLXX]

They're all 65535 amirite? I did them mentally.

Tested under Office 97 and Office XP's Excel, works perfectly fine there.

[CluelessNoob]

Quote:

[Originally Posted by sigint33;68878]Hope your payroll dept. isn't using Excel

No, but this may help explain the over inflated "losses" claimed by the SBA, RIAA and MPAA.

[evlncrn8]

Quote:

[Originally Posted by LLXX;68896]They're all 65535 amirite? I did them mentally. Tested under Office 97 and Office XP's Excel, works perfectly fine there.

yup, all 65535, excel 2007 somehow sees it as 100000 , thats the issue, quite how it became evident is a mystery, considering as you say office 97 and office xp do not show the same symptoms

[CluelessNoob]

Excel 2000 also does not exhibit the problem.

I wonder how good M$'s revision control is, and if there will soon be a programmer looking for a job.

[SiGiNT]

Apparently, from what I can glean in the M$ yahoo groups - they were trying to fix, or improve the FPU rounding problem, it seems at or around 65535 Excel starts treating numbers differently, interestingly enough even though the product displayed is wrong the contents of that cell may be used in subsequent calculations with the correct results, (I'm not sure if that's true in all cases). Whatever happened to Lotus 123...... I remember well when it was the standard, actually quite impressive even in the earlier dos versions.

SiGiNT

Huh! just tried an experiment - put the above formula into cell A1 A1+1 = 100001, A1-1 = 65534 - WOW someone really screwed up

[LLXX]

This is what happens when some programmer thinks he can write a better float -> string than any of the years of tested code available.

[blabberer]

They will be disabling multiplication in all future versions of Excel.

No, no, no... remember this is effectively Office Vista.. so the fix will be, like:

You are trying to multiply 2 numbers and the answer is 65535. This is a very dangerous multiplication frequently used in viruses... Cancel / Allow?


slashdot

[naides]

Quote:

[Originally Posted by blabberer;68962] You are trying to multiply 2 numbers and the answer is 65535. This is a very dangerous multiplication frequently used in viruses... Cancel / Allow? slashdot

You bastard!
I had my mouth full of beer when I read your post, and now the computer screen and the wall behind it is full of little drops of bubbling amber. . .

I could had pee my pants. . . You are dangerous!

[blurcode]

Quote:

[Originally Posted by sigint33;68882]I wonder if it was coded in China S

Propably it was coded in India.

[Maximus]

No no, probably it was coded in Microsoft..