News
Excel Patch Causing Calculation Errors
Microsoft admitted on Friday that a patch it released last week is causing Excel 2003 to make some incorrect calculations.
Microsoft admitted on Friday that a patch it
released last week is causing Excel 2003 to make some incorrect calculations.
"We have updated bulletin MS08-014
to provide additional information on a newly identified issue that causes Microsoft
Excel 2003 calculations to return an incorrect result when a Real Time Data
source is used," Microsoft's Security Response Center's Bill Sisk wrote
in a blog post
last week.
"The issue affects a specific scenario and may not affect you...Our teams are testing a fix and will release it once it meets our quality bar for broad distribution," he continued.
Microsoft offers some insight into the problem in Knowledge Base (KB) article
950340.
According to the KB, after the patch is applied on systems with "Microsoft
Office Excel 2003 installed, array-entered functions that contain a Visual Basic
for Applications (VBA) macro that refers to a Real Time Data source return an
incorrect value. The incorrect value is usually 0."
According to the very short KB item, for a current workaround, Microsoft recommends, "Run the function on each cell individually instead of on the array of cells."
The only other information available in the KB is that Microsoft is working
on a fix and will post more information as it becomes available.
The patch was released last week to stop
versions of Excel from allowing several types of remote execution attacks.
About the Author
Becky Nagel is vice president of AI for 1105 Media, where she specializes in training internal and external customers on maximizing their business potential via a wide variety of generative AI technologies as well as developing cutting-edge AI content and events. She's the author of "ChatGPT Prompt 101 Guide for Business Uses," regularly leads research studies on generative AI business usage, and serves as the director of AI Boardroom, a new resource for C-level executives looking to excel in the AI era. Prior to her current position she was a technical leader for 1105 Media's Web, advertising and production teams as well as editorial director for a suite of enterprise technology publications, including serving as founding editor of PureAI.com. She has 20 years of enterprise technology journalism experience, and regularly speaks and writes about generative AI, AI, edge computing and other cutting-edge technologies. She can be reached at [email protected].