Software
Microsoft responses to the Excel Math bug
Microsoft is currently working on the hilarious bug.
Yesterday evening we were alerted to an issue in Excel 2007 (and Excel Services 2007) involving calculation of numbers around 65,535. Further testing showed a similar phenomenon with 65,536 as well. This issue only exists in Excel 2007, not previous versions.
This bug, as Microsoft said, is because “Excel incorrectly displays the result of a calculation in 12 very specific cases” and “the issue is actually not in the calculation itself (the result of the calculation stored in Excel’s memory is correct), but only in the result that is shown in the sheet.”
“Of the 9.214*10^18 different floating point numbers (floating point on wikipedia) that Excel 2007 can store, there are 6 floating point numbers (using binary representation) between 65534.99999999995 and 65535, and 6 between 65535.99999999995 and 65536 that cause this problem. ”
A fix should be available “very soon”.
