Calculation Error

[Kenneth John Barclay]

I use the table calculation feature for grading some students progress. The table cells are summed vertically and a total is provided at the bottom of the column.
The formula is set as (typ) SUM(C3:C8) and the number format is 0.0 so that my grades can take the form with one decimal place.
I inadvertently input a grade value of 4,4 instead of 4.4. There was no error message and the calculation provided a value that was equal to adding the value of 8 rather than 4.4.

Is there a documented feature that allows a calculation like this to be legal in the Word table calculations????

Thanks in advance.
Ken

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Kenneth John Barclay

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Must be. I get the same kind of behavior.

Moreover, while trying to type 9,10,11 into a cell, I inadvertently typed
9.10.11, and discovered else... and equally bizarre.

All this goes to show that if you're going to rely on Word for this sort of
thing, you'd darn well better double-check your data entry, because Word
isn't exactly generous in handing out error messages. ;-) Better still, use
Excel. It treats 9,10,11 and 9.10.10 as text entries, and refuses to include
them in the sum.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Please respond in the newsgroups so everyone can follow along.
http://www.herbtyson.com
I use the table calculation feature for grading some students progress. The
table cells are summed vertically and a total is provided at the bottom of
the column.
The formula is set as (typ) SUM(C3:C8) and the number format is 0.0 so that
my grades can take the form with one decimal place.
I inadvertently input a grade value of 4,4 instead of 4.4. There was no
error message and the calculation provided a value that was equal to adding
the value of 8 rather than 4.4.

Is there a documented feature that allows a calculation like this to be
legal in the Word table calculations????

Thanks in advance.
Ken

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entirely with recyclable bytes
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Kenneth John Barclay

 

[macropod]

Hi Herb,

If you think that's weird, you've obviously never tried to use a cell
reference for a cell containing a date. Regardless of the format, Word does
'math' on it and returns a value that is nothing like a date....

Cheers