Excel messes up calculations following Microsoft patch
On its recent patch day, Microsoft released an update described in security bulletin MS08-014. This update can cause Excel to get some of its sums wrong. The company has released a workaround.
According to a Microsoft knowledge base article, the bug can cause miscalculation of results in worksheets that access real time data sources using functions programmed in Visual Basic for Applications. As a temporary solution, the company recommends applying such functions to individual cells rather than groups of cells. This should prevent the problem from occurring.
According to an entry in the company’s security blog, the developers are already testing a patch to fix this bug, but it is not known when the update to the update will be released.
See also:
- Update: March 2008 Monthly Release, entry in Microsoft’s security blog
- After you install security update MS08-014, Excel 2003 calculations return an incorrect result when a Real Time Data source is used in a user-defined Visual Basic for Applications function, knowledge base article from Microsoft
(mba)