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It's a given that every major software release, being the complex things that they are, has a few bugs here and there... but this multiplication bug in Excel 2007 is a pretty big oversight on Microsoft's part.

On a Google.groups message board, a poster has found a bug in Excel where anything that should resolve to 65,535 is displayed as 100,000.

In trying, and succeeding, to confirm this, other posters have discovered more flaws in Excel 2007's multiplication abilities, such as the following:

=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

All of these give incorrect answers... defaulting, it would appear, to 100,000.

Worse, is the formula is contained in a cell and then used as part of another formula, the result from that will be wrong as well as the original formula solution will be incorrect. Good, eh?

I've just spoken with one team of accountants using Excel 2007 and they're now checking all their formulas as this could have a major impact on their clients' spreadsheets.

The bug has been reported to Microsoft so you can expect a fix pretty damn soon... until then, keep that Texas Instruments calculator handy!


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