Automated stupidity: the best kind of stupidity

[fivemack]

Excel just marked a cell as 'contains possibly wrong formula' because I wasn't adding in the date.

In C1, there is a date; in C2:C10 there are a collection of sums of money, some positive and some negative; in C11 there is sum(C2:C10), and Excel has stuck a little green note in the corner of that cell suggesting that maybe I meant sum(C1:C10).

Dates are stored internally as a count of days since January 1st 1904, so if you look at them as numbers they're around 37000. Adding them to a collection of sums of money which are things like 'income tax deducted from salary this month' or 'pension contribution this month', so of the order of hundreds of pounds, screws up the calculation right royally.

Comments

[aldabra]

There are modes where it will automatically format the sums of money as dates, which are even more annoying.

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

Dates are stored internally as a count of days since January 1st 1904

Or as a count of days since January 1st 1900, depending...

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

Ahem as a count of days since January 1st 1900 with an erroneous leap day in that year.

Thank you Lotus for giving us that little joy that will probably last for ever now.

That took 3 attempts to format correctly and post as a reply to the right thing. Clearly my brain has died.