Excel says two numbers are not equal
Column A are numbers typed into the cells. Column B, the numbers in B1 to B3 are also typed in. Cell B4 is SUM(b1:b3) C4 is =B4=A4 Can someone please explain why excel is saying the two numbers in A4 & B4 are not equal. I understand about using rounding or truncation with large calculations but I've never seen anything like this on such a simple calculation. I've tried this on a new spreadsheet and the results are the same. I am using Excel Version 16.109 (26033013) on a Mac. Thank you for your help.
Help with Excel pop out window
I found a free spreadsheet online that I wanted to use. I am able to manipulated it for my use case. But the original creator added these call out fields that I cannot seem to find out how to delete or change the syntax. I can't even find out what they are called. Any suggestions?? In the attachment, I select a filed and a little yellow box pops up. How do I change or delete these??
Excel repair strips all formulas from large .xlsm after March 2026 security update (KB5002849)
Hi everyone, I'm a master's student at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. My thesis is a health economic cost-effectiveness model built entirely in Excel — a gender-neutral static Markov cohort model with 34 worksheets. The file has become completely unusable after what I believe is the March 2026 security update, and I'm running out of options. The file: - .xlsm, ~46.5 MB compressed, ~370 MB uncompressed XML - 34 worksheets, four of which are 73–92 MB each (Markov trace sheets) - ~65,000 formulas, ~33,500 shared formulas - Heavy use of LET, LAMBDA, XLOOKUP, XMATCH, CHOOSECOLS, TAKE, MAP, SWITCH - 771 defined names including ~147 hidden _xlpm.* LET/LAMBDA variable placeholders - Stored on OneDrive via KI SharePoint, 34,000+ AutoSave revisions - Contains VBA (vbaProject.bin) The problem: Every time I open the file — on Excel for Mac or Excel Online — the repair engine triggers and strips ALL formulas from every sheet, replacing them with cached values. The file shrinks from ~46.5 MB to ~26 MB. Clicking "No" on the repair dialog just closes the file. There is no way to bypass the repair. What I've verified: - Extracted the .xlsm as a ZIP and confirmed all formulas (<f> tags) are fully intact in the raw XML - Libr€Office Calc can read the formulas but cannot execute them (Err:508 — no LET/LAMBDA support) - Removed 158 broken named ranges (#REF! and #NAME? entries) from workbook.xml and rebuilt the archive — repair engine still strips all formulas - The issue reproduces on every OneDrive version history copy (up until I largely used LET formulas in my sheets - but there is still 1,5months of changes lost) - The issue reproduces on both Excel for Mac and Excel Online Suspected cause: The March 10, 2026 security update (KB5002849) patched CVE-2026-26108, a heap overflow in Excel's file parsing during loading. The same patch was applied to Office Online Server (KB5002846). I believe the tightened parsing now rejects or flags my file's large XML structures as potentially malicious, triggering the repair engine to strip all formulas. This is consistent with: - The known _xlfn. namespace bug on Excel for Mac (reported by multiple users on Microsoft Q&A since late 2024) - The timing - the file was working before this update flawlessly up until March 16th - The fact that Excel Online is also affected (same server-side patch) My questions to the community: 1. Has anyone else experienced formula stripping on large workbooks after the March 2026 update? 2. Is there a way to bypass the repair engine on Mac, or roll back the specific security patch without downgrading all of Office? 3. Would opening this file on Windows Excel (pre-patch or current) preserve the formulas? If anyone with a Windows PC would be willing to try opening and re-saving this file, I would be incredibly grateful. 4. Is there now effectively a size/complexity ceiling for Excel workbooks that makes models like this unviable? If so - should I be migrating this to another environment (R, Python, etc.) going forward? This file represents six months of thesis work. The formulas are all there in the XML. I just need Excel to stop destroying them on open. Any help, pointers, or similar experiences would be hugely appreciated. Thank you, Florian Boschek
Look up two parts of a string in a cell
Hello All, I know all about the XLOOKUP() but at times I need a special type of a look up. if I have a cell with the text “Apples and Oranges” how can I write an XLOOKUP to evaluate the “Apples” and then evaluate the “Oranges” parts. for example if I have a list of fruits in a column, then in the next column I have true if the fruit has seeds and false if the fruit does not have seeds. now normally the XLOOKUP will look for the whole string, so if there is no fruit called “Apples and Oranges” it will fail and not return anything. But I do have “Apples” in one cell and it has true for having seeds, AND I do have “Oranges” and it has false for seeds (these are Naval oranges 🤪) so the XLOOKUP will not return false. how can I write an XLOOKUP to return “Apples”, “Oranges”, AND “Apples and Oranges”? I thought of replacing the part after the And but then I’ll lose the fine parts, then I tried splitting the string on “AND” and that did not work at all. I guess you can’t run an XLOOKUP on an array part??? any help will be greatly appreciated!
Losing borders in transition from Excel 97 to 2024 Pro Plus
I have a handy appointments calendar (.xls) that has used Excel 97 on a Windows 7 laptop for a long time. I want to run this on my latest laptop that has Excel 2024 Pro Plus on Windows 11. When I open this now, many of the cell borders, most of which are involved with conditional formatting, are either present when they should be absent or absent when they should be present. The calendar is useless as opened. I have worked to reformat the cells, but it has taken me hours to get from January to April and some aspects are still problematic, albeit acceptable. The conditional formatting process is very different between the two versions. Is there some trick to getting newer versions of Excel to properly recognize formatting from older versions? I created this calendar in Excel 97 very easily many years ago. I am not sure I could duplicate it, even from scratch, using Excel 2024.
A 40,000+ VBA line Block and Stack workplace planning tool made in Excel
Hi all, I’ve been an Excel user for a long time, but until the last 8 months I had never really explored the full power of Excel/VBA. With AI’s help, I’ve been building a workplace Block and Stack planning tool called Work Stack. It’s a niche use case, but a very real one in my industry, supporting corporate office planners, workplace teams, and anyone trying to move and reorganise teams within an office. When I first started, I thought an AI agent would simply be able to generate the answer for me. I quickly realised that wasn’t enough, especially when it came to reliably recreating the block and stack image and handling the planning logic behind it. That was when I decided to build it properly. I have zero coding background, but 15+ years of workplace experience, so the setup became: AI as the code developer, and me as the product owner, logic lead, tester, and relentless breaker of whatever had just been built. I moved very quickly at first and had a “working model” within about 6 weeks. The problem was that it produced all sorts of crazy results and was basically unusable, untestable, and unfixable. That was where I learned some hard lessons about relying too heavily on arrays and not being disciplined enough with separation of concerns. Version 1 was a false start, but a very useful one. I scrapped it and rebuilt the tool properly from scratch. The rebuild took 6+ months rather than 6 weeks, but Work Stack is now at beta stage and is being tested and demoed by industry peers. Attached are 3 images: Image 1 — Current Stack This is a standard desk-sharing workplace stack. It shows teams grouped into functions, some placed in neighbourhood zones, some co-located with other teams (shown with the two-headed arrow), and some “breached” teams shown with a red border where they are sharing desks more aggressively than the building guideline allows (80% in this example). There are also scattered spare desks shown in white blocks at the end of floors. As teams move, the team blocks, floors, and footer totals all recalculate automatically. Image 2 — AutoStack Output This is the result of running the most complex feature in the tool: AutoStack. It assesses the current stack and then restructures it based on the user’s instructions. In this example, I asked it to fix all breached teams, reunite teams with their function groups, dissolve neighbourhood zones and co-locations, and consolidate spare desks where possible. Something that would normally take a space planner weeks of effort can now be done by VBA in Excel in seconds. That part still blows me away. Image 3 — Stack Editor This is the main parent form, called Stack Editor. It acts as the control hub for creating, editing, and customising the stack. At the moment it has 37 features and counting. Under the hood, the rebuilt version is structured far more seriously than the original. It uses an object-oriented VBA model built around core class modules for the plan, floors, and teams, with supporting classes for things like zones, functions, financials, and rendering. In other words, the stack is modelled as real objects rather than just spreadsheet rows. I also rebuilt it with much stricter boundaries between logic, persistence, rendering, and UI. That discipline is what made the second version stable enough to keep growing, and it is a big part of why the codebase has now grown to 40,000+ lines without collapsing under its own weight. I mainly wanted to share this with people who might appreciate this very specific use case in VBA. At some point I may need to port it to Python or something similar, but for now I’m honestly amazed at how far this 30-year-old language can be pushed.
