Having trouble with formula within Word tables - any advice?

[Deb]

I set up a formula within a Word table "=AVERAGE(LEFT)" on a school pupil
report to help staff to quickly complete an average score. In most cases the
boxes to the left contain a figure, sometimes a box may contain "n/a" where a
grade is not applicable. Sometimes this formula seems to work, but others it
does not and I am unable to establish any logical pattern.

Does anyone have any clues to what is wrong?

 

[Tony Jollans]

Word will look to as many cells immediately to the left as contain numbers,
so ..

1 2 3 4 average = 2.5 (=(1+2+3+4)/4)
n/a 2 3 4 average = 3 (=(2+3+4)/3)
1 n/a 3 4 average = 3.5 (=3+4)/2)

Also you must be sure that the field is updated. You can set fields to
automatically update on printing which ensures prints are correct but to be
sure the screen-displayed document is correct, select the field(s) (or the
whole document with Ctrl+a) and press F9.

 

[macropod]

Hi Deb,

The LEFT, RIGHT, ABOVE and BELOW parameters are all buggy - see my Word
Filed Maths 'tutorial' at:
http://www.wopr.com/cgi-bin/w3t/showthreaded.pl?Number=365442
for more details, and some possible work-arounds.

Cheers