As always, if it’s from Microsoft, it must have bugs. Reports have circulated that Excel isn’t good at math at all, missing out something as simple as 77.1 x 850. Instead of dishing out the pen-and-paper solvable arithmetic (the answer’s 65,535), it gives out the wrong answer (100,000).

This happens on two instances, particularly:

• The result of the calculation is a number from 65534.99999999995 to 65535. The calculation is performed correctly. However, the result is incorrectly shown as 100000.
• The result of the calculation is a number from 65535.99999999995 to 65536. The calculation is performed correctly. However, the result is incorrectly shown as 100001.

Imagine being beaten by a cheap calculator. At least with the the cheap calculator, you can flip it over and laugh at 58008.

I could only imagine how this could have affected business data processed through Excel 2007. Hey, you just might need to review that payslip.

Anyway, at least Microsoft now has a fix for it. Bad news is, it’s a damn 32 MB file. Pretty hefty to fix such a careless programming boo-boo.

Download details about the Excel 2007 fix can be found here.