Hi:

I just found the most astonishing bug in Numbers. I have a spreadsheet where
one cell references another. Except it doesn't. The number which appears in
the cell is different from the number in the referred cell. Changing the
formatting corrects this bug: the cell is in "Custom Format 2" and changing
it to "Number" forces it to show the correct reference.

Odd, no? It's rather dented my faith in Numbers as a way of preparing my
accounts.

Martin S Taylor

Martin S Taylor wrote:
> Hi:
>
> I just found the most astonishing bug in Numbers. I have a spreadsheet where
> one cell references another. Except it doesn't. The number which appears in
> the cell is different from the number in the referred cell. Changing the
> formatting corrects this bug: the cell is in "Custom Format 2" and changing
> it to "Number" forces it to show the correct reference.
>
> Odd, no? It's rather dented my faith in Numbers as a way of preparing my
> accounts.

Probably all spreadsheets do this.

E.G. MS Excel. Put a date in a cell and format it as "Date". In
another cell specify any non-date format and refer to the first cell.
What appears will probably be a strange number. Change the referring
cell to "date" format and the expected value appears.

In general the referring cell takes the value from the referred cell,
but not its formatting (colour, font, date, number, text, etc.)

However copying a cell usually prompts the user to include formatting or
not - so the choice is available.

--
Graham J

Graham J <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote:

> Martin S Taylor wrote:
> > Hi:
> >
> > I just found the most astonishing bug in Numbers. I have a spreadsheet where
> > one cell references another. Except it doesn't. The number which appears in
> > the cell is different from the number in the referred cell. Changing the
> > formatting corrects this bug: the cell is in "Custom Format 2" and changing
> > it to "Number" forces it to show the correct reference.
> >
> > Odd, no? It's rather dented my faith in Numbers as a way of preparing my
> > accounts.
>
> Probably all spreadsheets do this.

I've just tried it in Claris Works (4.0) SS and got a big surprise:

If I format a cell with "time" and then duplicate it to an unformatted
cell, the original cell appears correctly but the duplicate appears
incorrectly as a 'scientific' number. this is the sort of problem you
have described...

BUT...

If I format a cell as a numerical date, that cell appears incorrectly as
"#DATE!" but an unformatted duplicate cell appears with the correct date
- the opposite of what you have experienced. If I then click back on
the original cell, the text "#DATE!" apears in the entry window but the
correctly formatted date continues to appear in the duplicate
unformatted cell. Repeatedly duplicating from the origial cell to
unformatted cells produces the correct date format in each of them, even
though the original cell does not show it.

[Still slightly boggled]
--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

On 11 Sep 2023, Martin S Taylor wrote
(in article<0001HW.2AAF8F17002DDFC3700004DC638F@news.eternal-september.org>):

> Hi:
>
> I just found the most astonishing bug in Numbers. I have a spreadsheet where
> one cell references another. Except it doesn't. The number which appears in
> the cell is different from the number in the referred cell. Changing the
> formatting corrects this bug: the cell is in "Custom Format 2" and changing
> it to "Number" forces it to show the correct reference.
>
> Odd, no? It's rather dented my faith in Numbers as a way of preparing my
> accounts.
>
> Martin S Taylor

Am interested in reproducing this - what’s the format of the original cell
being referenced? (And example contents).

I’m a passably big user of Numbers, although mostly it must be said for
very simple stuff that I can format nicely with multiple tables on a page.

Cheers,
Ian