Update: Im Excel-Team-Blog wurde eine kleine Erklärung veröffentlicht (englisch), es beträfe “nur” die Anzeige, nicht das zwischengespeicherte Ergebnis. Dumm also “nur” für die, die auch mal Werte anzeigen lassen und nicht nur damit rechnen…

Update 2: Ein Hotfix ist mittlerweile verfügbar.

Microsoft Excel 2007, a spreadsheet calculation program for which the correctness of calculations is not quite unimportant, messes up some multiplications that should result in 65,535, e.g.

850 * 77.1 = 100,000

How it gets the idea to turn a result that has the lowest 16 bits (integer representation) all set to 1 into 100,000 (decimal) – and only with some pairs of numbers, not all – I have no idea. Maybe they wanted to hide another bug or flaw this way… anyway, that’s become a complete flop. They want to release a patch as soon as possible…

Maybe it was just a test to see if people are actually using Excel 2007 already and not stick with older versions (which probably many companies do)…?

(via Golem.de)

Update: The Excel Team Blog published a little explanation, according to which “only” the display is affected, not the stored result. So it’s “only” bad for those who have results displayed and don’t just calculate…

Update 2: A hotfix is now available.