Excel 2007 calculation bug displays apparently wrong numbers

September 26, 2007 11 Comments

A bug has been found in Excel 2007 and Excel services 2007 which appears to calculate certain results incorrectly. In fact, the stored value of the result is correct, and other calculations based on that result will calculate correctly. The only error is in the display of the number, not the internal calculation. This is, of course, still a problem for anyone who is reading the values on screen or on a printout, or exporting them to other programs (see further down in this post).

According to the article on the Excel team blog about this bug:

The first example that we heard about was =77.1*850, but it became clear from our testing as well as additional reports that this was just one instance where Excel 2007 would return a value of 100,000 instead of 65,535.  The majority of these additional reports were focused on multiplication (ex. =5.1*12850; =10.2*6425; =20.4*3212.5 ), but our testing showed that this really didn’t have anything do to with multiplication – it manifested itself with many but not all calculations in Excel that should have resulted in 65,535 (=65535*1 and =16383.75*4 worked for instance).  Further testing showed a similar phenomenon with 65,536 as well.  This issue only exists in Excel 2007, not previous versions.
…
Said another way, =850*77.1 will display an incorrect value, but if you then multiply the result by 2, you will get the correct answer (i.e. if A1 contains “=850*77.1”, and A2 contains “=A1*2”, A2 will return the correct answer of 131,070).

So, it is important to note that most calculations which result in numbers near to or equal to 65,535 and 65,536 will be absolutely fine. It is only through some very specific oddities about how floating point numbers work that you will get one of the 12 situations where this bug occurs. If it does, you will have cells that read “100,000” rather than the correct answer. Anything else in Excel which you base on those cells will be correct.

You can add to them, multiply by them, show conditional formats such as colour scales or icon sets, even draw charts with those values and Excel will correctly handle the real, underlying value and not the displayed one. Macros or external programmatic methods of retrieving the cell’s contents also return the true stored value.

»Read the rest of the post to find out how this bug will bite you»

Filed under Office System Tagged with , , , ,

GPMC will be removed if you install Vista Service Pack 1 (follow up post)

September 23, 2007 7 Comments

As I discussed in a previous post, I thought that the removal of the Group Policy Management Console from Vista when installing service pack 1 was a pretty bad idea. David Overton asked if anyone cared about GPMC being pulled out of Vista with sp1, while others claim it really is a good step for a variety of reasons, and I wanted to follow up on this.

There were various articles announcing Vista sp1, including one on the official Vista team blog which managed to say lots about all the good stuff and conveniently forget some things like the removal of the very useful GPMC, which is only mentioned in the whitepaper (and later reported on by various bloggers and journalists of varying degrees of credibility).
» Read the discussion about why GPMC should or should not be removed by Vista service pack 1 »

Filed under Group Policy, Windows Vista Tagged with , , ,

Use Bitlocker drive encryption for all your data volumes on Vista

September 23, 2007

Thanks to a comment by Steve Lamb on his blog, I now find out that you can already use Bitlocker to encrypt volumes other than the operating system partition, you just have to do it from the command line.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn this, and it means I don’t have to wait for sp1. »Read the rest of the article to find out how»

Filed under Security and Malware, Windows Vista Tagged with , , ,

How to make WordPress’ new Tags work with Windows Live Writer

September 23, 2007 17 Comments

Windows Live Writer Beta 3 works really well with WordPress and multi-level categories

Windows Live Writer Beta 3 was recently announced and it works really well. That is to say, it “does what it says in the tin”. Writing well-formed blog posts is really simple, it even downloads styles directly from my WordPress blog and allows to me to do proper previews to see exactly what I will get before I publish a post, even when working offline.

There’s even more rich functionality and interoperability with third-party platforms than you might expect from a Microsoft product. For example, WordPress.com supports hierarchical categories. I find this especially useful as I show my categories as a drop-down list rather than take up loads of the sidebar with lots of choices. Windows Live Writer (WLW) provides me the ability to categorise posts, and to add new categories if I need them, including specifying a parent category so they fit into the multi-level hierarchy. Oh, and it does all this offline as well. This is great, and it’s the sort of attention to detail which I appreciate being in a product I use several times a week.

And now the Bad News: WLW does not support the new WordPress Tags by default

WordPress.com have announced a change to the way they use categories and tags. Windows Live Writer Beta 3 was released before this change and does not know what to do with them, so it does not create any, and removes any that already exist if you edit a previous post. However, there is a way to fix this with a registry change, but I found it caused some instability.

» Click here to find out about WordPress tags and how to make them work with Live Writer »

Filed under Utilities + Tools, Web publishing Tagged with , , ,

Microsoft lost appeal to the European Courts over anti-competitive practices

September 17, 2007 2 Comments

The verdict is finally here. The appeal has been lost, all that Microsoft got out of it is the requirement to have an independent monitor to check it was keeping in line with the court’s rulings. The original verdict of the European Commission in 2004 was appealed to the European Court of First Instance. In the court’s statement about the appeal case, they said:

The Court of First Instance essentially upholds the Commission’s decision finding that Microsoft abused its dominant position…The Court criticises, in particular, the obligation imposed on Microsoft to allow the monitoring trustee, independently of the Commission, access to its information, documents, premises and employees and also to the source code of its relevant products.

Read more of this post

Filed under Industry News, IT legal matters, Microsoft Tagged with , , , ,

Sorting out the complexity of Microsoft Volume Licensing

September 12, 2007 3 Comments

Vijay started a thread on his iQubed blog to which I replied at length, so he split out my comments as a post in their own right. The debate was around whether MS volume licensing programmes are too complex, and take up too much of a business’ time and energy, as well as making it harder for their suppliers and consulting partners to be sure they are giving the best advice. The question posed was “Who Understands Microsoft Licensing?”

Fundamentally, one size simply does not fit all. The particular firewall configuration you create for one client will not be suitable for another with different needs.

Does the manufacturer’s configuration manual tell you which options to choose? Probably not, it tells you how to change the setting, which options do what, but it is down to your experience to match the need to a solution and then implement it.

Generally speaking the licensing programmes themselves are reasonably easy to choose between, if the right questions can be asked and answered. The extra benefits which come with some of the programmes are often not the main reason to choose them, but perhaps these are too often allowed to cloud the issue. I’ve tried to discuss the questions below without getting bogged down in the details of exactly which programme offers what, partly since that will change over time and partly because introducing Microsoft’s own terminology is the fastest way to lose people in this minefield.

Read more of this post

Filed under Licensing Tagged with , , , , ,

Windows Live Writer Beta 3 and dictionaries

September 10, 2007 1 Comment

I thought I should make my last post written using Live Writer Beta 2 one about the new beta 3 release. For the impatient amongst you, you can download Live Writer Beta 3 here.

This is supposedly to be the last of the Beta versions of WLW before a final one is released. There are a few changes over Beta 2, most notably where the program gets installed.

More information about switching dictionaries

If you already followed my post about changing the dictionary to a UK English version you may be interested in this article in which the author has done what I wish I had found time for – a follow up on Graham’s work to find those other language files and perhaps a clue as to the engine being used here.

I’ll do a follow up post about the UK dictionary switch once I have Beta 3 installed.

Filed under Utilities + Tools, Web publishing Tagged with , , , , , ,

Microsoft Exams free second chance offer

September 8, 2007 5 Comments

Soon you will be able to get a free second shot to pass a Microsoft exam. They have run this kind of offer before and it always seems really popular.

Basically, you register for the deal with Microsoft, which gets you a voucher number. You then use this voucher number when you register and pay for your exam on the Prometric site as usual. If you fail the exam when you take it you can re-register to take the same exam again in a fixed timeframe.

The offer should be available from September 15th until January 31st, though whether that end-date is for the first try or your second attempt is not clear yet.

Read more of this post

Filed under Events, Training + certification Tagged with , , , , , , ,

More bad news for Vista Service pack 1

August 31, 2007 4 Comments

Apart from the long wait for a service pack for Vista (over a year from initial release) and the hugely bloated size of the “stand-alone” option to apply the service pack to machines without connecting them to the internet, I just learned some bad news.

David Overton posted an article about what’s coming in the first service pack for Vista. In it he links to and quotes this BetaNews article which says:

the service pack will uninstall the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) and GPEdit.msc will edit local Group Policy by default

Read more of this post

Filed under Group Policy, Patching + hotfixes, Windows Vista Tagged with , , ,

Patching XP and Vista with Service Packs and Hotfix "rollups"

August 31, 2007 1 Comment

In the last few days a couple of contradictory things seem to have happened:

  • Everyone and his dog seems to have blogged about the release dates for Vista service pack 1 and separately XP service pack 3 -both in 2008
  • Microsoft seem to have requested that the popular patching utility “AutoPatcher” be taken down and no longer distributed.

Ironically, I started reading an excellent post on Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen blog about his favourite Windows tools and utilities for developers and power users, updated for 2007. He posted this on 23rd August. I started to follow and download several of the applications he linked, in some cases to do something new, in others to see how they stacked up against tools I already used. I was still downloading today, when I found that one of his links, to AutoPatcher, showed me this page

Read more of this post

Filed under Patching + hotfixes, Utilities + Tools

Microsoft Licensing Sales Specialist exams changing

August 29, 2007 1 Comment

Thanks to Susanne for the heads up that the Microsoft MLSS and MLSE accreditations are about to change.

I renewed my Licensing Sales Specialist accreditation in May, but had not got round to taking the other five modules to become a MSLE. I’ve done two of them today and hope to get through the rest this week, in plenty of time to avoid the 11th September deadline.

It will be interesting to see how the new model works, but at least this way I will be able to use the accreditation for a year before I have to renew my qualification.

Filed under Licensing, Training + certification

Group Policy best practice analyser tool available

August 28, 2007

I have not yet had a chance to try this out, but still thought it was worth giving people the heads up. The description given on the download page for the Group Policy Best Practice Analyzer for Windows Server 2003 is:

The Microsoft Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer (GPDBPA) for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 is designed to help you identify Group Policy configuration errors or other dependency failures that may prevent settings or features from functioning as expected.

Read more of this post

Filed under Group Policy, Utilities + Tools Tagged with , , ,

Using British English spelling in Windows Live Writer

August 28, 2007 7 Comments

I finally found a way to get Live Writer to stop “correcting” my correct spellings, which makes me really happy. It is so frustrating when my screen is covered in coloured wavy lines because I chose to utilise an English spelling rather than an Americanized one. I’m not saying US spellings are inherently “wrong”, but they are wrong in the context of me being British, and if I were to mix my spellings it would be very inconsistent.

Read more of this post

Filed under Utilities + Tools, Web publishing Tagged with , , , , , ,

Further changes to Getting IT Right

August 27, 2007 3 Comments

Since the changes in June the amount of content on the blog is growing and the number of daily visitors continues to rise. August is the first month with more than 1,000 visitors, and should end with a cumulative total of 5,000 visits since the blog began in January.

So I chose a new theme, this time it’s Fadtastic which I think has a nice clean feel to it. I hope you like it too. My main reasons for choosing it were not just aesthetic, but practical – it is highly customisable so I can choose exactly what navigation aids and information to include in the right hand pane.

I know that many readers arrive after following links on forums or search engines to some of the more technical “tutorial” type posts, especially “The One About DSMod” (sounds like a geeky episode of Friends!). The new navigation should help to find some of the other content more easily.

Incidentally, the BlogRoll of sites I like to use is now at the bottom of the page. I need to update this with more places that I have been using a lot recently.

Let me know what you think of the new layout.

Filed under Blog updates

10 great features to use in Windows Vista – part 1

August 18, 2007

I am going to be very careful in introducing this article. This is my personal view of some features that have been included in Windows Vista and why I like them. I do not claim they are the best features. I have no opinion on whether these are better implemented than in some Linux build or Mac OS. This is simply about the things I have found added to my productivity over the last 6 months of using the RTM version of Vista Ultimate. This is the first 5 of 10 useful things which are right there, out of the box, no third party applications or tweaks required. Items 6 to 10 will follow in a second article very soon.

Note: I certainly do not think these are necessarily big enough to merit an upgrade to Vista on their own. They are probably good enough to choose to have Vista on your next machine rather than sticking to your old ways and asking for XP to be installed. In a follow-up article I may discuss more of the technical reasons why Vista is worth having (and potentially upgrading to if those factors are important to you). Today’s list is built around things the everyday user will benefit from in their daily interactions.

Read more of this post

Filed under Utilities + Tools, Windows Vista

Industry Insiders article – Don’t Secure Your Documents!

August 16, 2007

An article I wrote for Microsoft’s Industry Insiders blog site has just been published.

This week I was asked by the IT support guy who works for one of my clients about how a user could put a password on a document. Since I am both their external consultant and their MS Office trainer, I was the right person to call.

To me this question is always a red flag as it implies that the user does not understand the places which already exist for them to save documents in such a way as to give access to the correct group of colleagues (or just themselves). My answer was therefore “I’ll show you how to do it for the sake of argument, but you should tell the user that they should not do this”.

Read the whole of this article about a proper approach to document security and avoiding mere security theatre.

The Industry Insiders site looks at various topics affecting corporate IT, with a slight lean towards information security, which is unsurprising since it is maintained by IT Pro Evangelist for Security, Steve Lamb (and evangelist manager Eileen Brown)

Filed under Office System, Security and Malware, Work and profile

Why I’m using Foxit reader for Acrobat PDF files

August 13, 2007 2 Comments

For a while I had been reading good things about Foxit Software’s tools for reading, creating and editing PDF files, but never bothered to actually try them out. I recently switched from using Adobe’s Acrobat reader when I finally got fed up with the oversized, bloated product and it’s constant nagging to go off and update itself online (especially since this causes a UAC prompt on Vista). I used to dig around and kill off the update functionality, but enough was enough – why should I have to struggle to try to make the software behave how I want when it might just be easier to switch to a different product.

So, after a very quick download of the 3MB installation file and a simple, no frills installation, I was ready to go. Compare this with the vast and unnecessary 21MB of Adobe’s Acrobat reader – and don’t get me started on the fact that they force me to first download a download manager before I can finally download the actual setup file, when I could have just used my several highly competent browser plugins to get the install files so much quicker. Foxit also comes as an MSI – so much easier than Adobe’s EXE file when it comes to deployment using standard tools such as Group Policy Software Installation (GPSI) or scripts. These download sizes are reflected in the relative amounts of memory consumed by these two products when opening files to view.

Why do I care about my PDF file reader so much? Well, I actually use PDFs fairly extensively for storing “read-only” copies of my own documents, which I then want to access, print, share or publish as easily as possible.

Read more of this post

Filed under Training + certification, Utilities + Tools, Web publishing Tagged with , , ,

9 patches from MS for August Patch Tuesday

August 10, 2007

This is the August Advance Notification bulletin about the Microsoft patches which are due on the next patch Tuesday on 14th August 2007.

On the security updates list there are 6 critical updates and 3 important ones. One of the updates is for Office, and is deemed critical for Office 2000 but only important for Office 2003 (and interestingly also Excel viewer 2003).

What’s really odd is this bit:

Non-Security, High-Priority Updates on MU, WU, WSUS and SUS

For this month:

  • Microsoft is planning to release four non-security, high-priority updates on Microsoft Update (MU) and Windows Server Update Services (WSUS).
  • Microsoft is planning to release two non-security, high-priority updates for Windows on Windows Update (WU) and Software Update Services (SUS).

Yes, that’s right, despite saying that SUS was now definitely end of life as of 10th July it looks like they are still releasing patches for it to use. Even back in January they were releasing some patches through MU and WSUS only (not WU and SUS). Maybe they found too many people were simply not getting patched properly.

Filed under Patching + hotfixes

Vista updates available for performance and compatibility

August 9, 2007

There are a couple of updates which have been released for Vista which are outside the WSUS infrastructure (or rather they don’t seem to show up as updates at the moment). KB938194 is a compatibility and reliability update and KB938979 is supposed to improve performance and reliability. Essentially the first one fixes a variety of seemingly unrelated things to do with stability and things which fail or stop completely, while the second is more about things which just take a lot longer than they should. There are 64 bit versions available as well here and here.

Filed under Patching + hotfixes, Windows Vista

← Older posts

Newer posts →