Excel can’t count - and here’s proof!
By Jon Honeyball in Editorial
Posted in Microsoft on
Dont you think its about time that Microsoft admitted that Excel cannot count, and that it is unreliable for any sort of numerically important calculations?
I have covered this subject for years in my PC Pro columns. Indeed,let me quote from a column from 2000:
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Loading ...Comment by MICHAEL TOTT - September 25, 2007 on 8:16 pm
How can this be happening with Excel? I have tried the above calculations on a good old fashioned calculator, using OpenOffice Calc and Microsoft Excel 2007, and only Excel shows this problem. If you think of the costs, shouldn’t Excel be the most accurate?
Comment by Rob James - September 28, 2007 on 11:41 am
Speaking as one who does use Excel for VAT returns, that is very scary! Question is, are any of the alternatives any more reliable?
Comment by Kenny McNally - September 28, 2007 on 1:09 pm
Just tested it on Excel 2004 for Mac and there were no problems
Comment by Ryan Jamieson - September 28, 2007 on 2:30 pm
Just tried it myself and in all cases Excel got it right.
Tested in
Microsoft Office Excel 2003 (11.6560.6568) SP2
Comment by david netherwood - September 28, 2007 on 3:37 pm
I just tried it and it got all the answer right. Excel 2003 11.8146.8132 SP2. Could they be CPU errors?
Comment by John Allen - September 28, 2007 on 5:28 pm
Thr writer clearly said this was a ‘new’ bug introduced in Excel 2007…
Comment by Mark Woods - October 1, 2007 on 2:00 am
Try using Quattro Pro. It doesn’t have any of Excel’s limitations and it computes all of the above correctly.
Comment by Rey Muradaz - October 8, 2007 on 3:52 pm
The MS response:
http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2007/09/25/calculation-issue-update.aspx
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