Hi all.
A coworker is having a problem with excel and I am in a quandry over it.
She has a file that contains about 24 worksheets (20 used). There are a
variety of numbers in groups of say 55-10 rows and 6 columns. She has used
the mean and standard deviation functions for the rows without a problem, but
upon using the SUM function she has discovered many randon miscalculations
(always less than the actual sum by the amount of one of the numbers in that
summed group).

I checked that the numbers were all formatted for number not text or
general. This made no change. If I changed the alignment from center to
general I could see that there were certain numbers that were aligned to the
left (as if regarded as text) but the formatting said it was number. Excel
would not change the number of decimal places from 0 to anything. The only
way around the problem was to retype the number in the cell and all was fine.
This is not a solution since one cannot be expected to go through all
calculations to double ceck them.

Any suggestions about the origin of this problem and the avoidance inthe
future?

Try this, KP. See the bit about Data Isn't Recognized...
http://www.officearticles.com/excel/...soft_excel.htm

************
Anne Troy
www.OfficeArticles.com

"KP Conrad" wrote in message
...
Hi all.
A coworker is having a problem with excel and I am in a quandry over it.
She has a file that contains about 24 worksheets (20 used). There are a
variety of numbers in groups of say 55-10 rows and 6 columns. She has
used
the mean and standard deviation functions for the rows without a problem,
but
upon using the SUM function she has discovered many randon miscalculations
(always less than the actual sum by the amount of one of the numbers in
that
summed group).

I checked that the numbers were all formatted for number not text or
general. This made no change. If I changed the alignment from center to
general I could see that there were certain numbers that were aligned to
the
left (as if regarded as text) but the formatting said it was number.
Excel
would not change the number of decimal places from 0 to anything. The
only
way around the problem was to retype the number in the cell and all was
fine.
This is not a solution since one cannot be expected to go through all
calculations to double ceck them.

Any suggestions about the origin of this problem and the avoidance inthe
future?