In the past, if I wanted to use an EXCEL data table, I was sure that
the "row input" and "column input" cells needed to have values, not
formulas, in them. It needed to be, for example, 3, not even =3,
since the latter is, technically, a formula. That made sense to me
because you are
asking EXCEL to give you some other cell's result with different
values for this "input" cell. Recently, for unrelated reasons, I
replaced
such an input with a formula and, to my surprise, the data table
results did not change and the data table seems to work anyway, which
kind of
blows me away. You would think that EXCEL would object to changing a
cell that has a formula in it, wouldn't you? Generally, there are
many ways for a formula to get the same result (using other precedent
cells) so clearly EXCEL is not varying those precedent cells. It
seems that, for the purpose of the data table results, EXCEL is
simply
ignoring the formula, in essence, disconnecting it from its
precedents, and replacing it with the values you ask it to test.


I am using EXCEL 2003 SP3 in case that matters.


Are any of you seeing the same phenomenon? Does it make sense to
you? Is this phenomenon, perhaps, due to a recent update by Microsoft
to EXCEL 2003 that was not there
before? As I mentioned above, I almost surely recall times when the
data table would NOT work, because the input cell had something like
=
3*0.5, which I sometimes do, to remind myself how I got to the 1.5
'input' value. But now, it seems to have no problem with the "row
input" or "column input" being a formula.


Thanks
Dean