Microsoft's Excel 2007 spreadsheet program is going to have to relearn part of its multiplication table.
In
a blog post, Microsoft employee David Gainer said that when computer
users tried to get Excel 2007 to multiply some pairs of numbers and the
result was 65,535, Excel would incorrectly display 100,000 as the
answer.
Gainer said Excel makes mistakes multiplying 77.1 by
850, 10.2 by 6,425 and 20.4 by 3,212.5, but the program appears to be
able to handle 16,383.75 times 4.
''Further testing showed a similar phenomenon with 65,536 as well,'' Gainer wrote Tuesday.
He
said Excel was actually performing the calculations correctly, but when
it comes time to show the answer on the screen, it messes up.
Gainer
said the bug is limited to six numbers from 65,534.99999999995 to
65,535, and six numbers from 65,535.99999999995 to 65,536, and that
Microsoft is working hard to fix the problem.
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