Back to the Microsoft Ad: can you select a cell and not have the value appear in the formula bar? Yes. Also, a Microsoft PR guy claims the ad is *correct*, that they have not yet pressed Enter, hence the total hasn't updated. But you will see, frame-by-frame, that the chart updates as quickly as the AutoSum. Bottom line: It is a bad formula. Or Photoshop. Never do math with Photoshop!
Links in the video:
David Yanofsky
qz.com
Brad Sams
Alex Wilhelm at TechCrunch
techcrunch.com
David Shaw Twitter Conversation:
Links in the video:
David Yanofsky
Microsoft botched the Excel spreadsheet in its Surface tablet ad
The new Microsoft advertisement touting the new Surface 2 tablet that is plastered on subway stations, bus shelters, and telephone booths across the country has an undeniable error. The ad depicts a spreadsheet of vacation expenses—from airfare to surf rentals—and totals them.
qz.com
Brad Sams
Alex Wilhelm at TechCrunch
Microsoft Didn't Get Its Math Wrong In That Excel Billboard | TechCrunch
Yesterday, AppleInsider pointed out that Microsoft appears to have made a calculation error in a billboard touting the fact that its Surface tablets ship with the Office productivity set of applications. A math typo in Excel while shouting that Excel is bundled with your new hardware? That would...
techcrunch.com
David Shaw Twitter Conversation:
Transcript of the video:
Learn Excel from MrExcel podcast episode 1827a.
Hide Value in Formula Bar.
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast.
I'm Bill Jelen.
Today's question is send in by Frank.
He say, is it possible to hide the value that shows in the formula bar.
Yeah, we're back to this Microsoft Excel ad and a lot of people that I respect you're weighing in and I absolutely respect Ed Bott that we were spending way too much time on this.
It's just a treasure thing, but hey, I MrExcel and that's what we do.
Woody Leonard it's not a flaw on Excel it's a poorly doctored screenshot displaying an apparently impossible state and the reason that this keeps coming up is if you look at the ad, there's nothing in the formula bar even though that this cell is selected.
All right! So, here in my last video I talked about this was a poorly contrived formula I still stand by that we're gonna insert a new row after Hotel, we're gonna type Car we're type 500 and control+enter and I agree that this does not look like that however let's select all cells control+1 go back to the Protection tab turn on hidden, uncheck locked, click OK, still showing 500, but then we go to the review tab and turn off or turn on protect sheet, click OK and we now, have exactly what is shown in the ad.
That's how I think it happened.
Now, why do I continue to pour gasoline on this fire.
Well, because this weekend Frank a Microsoft PR guy said hey, no the ad is correct when using Excel autosum recalculates after editing and kudos to Brad Sams who in this video showed how that is theoretically possible I'll put the link in the description here at YouTube, but let's try and replicate that.
So, what Frank is saying is that they properly use the SUM function down here great 9500.
So, then like Brad did we would delete this and actually type dollar sign 500 and not press Enter.
All right and sure enough Excel has not calculated yet because we have not pressed Enter.
However, in this case if what Frank Shaw says is correct then the 500 wouldn't be showing there what would have to happen is when I press ENTER three things happen, the 500 is going to disappear, the car is going to appear in the chart and then the animation is going to kick in at the 9500.
So, the only way that this could have happened the way that Frank says that it happened is when I press ENTER this has to hide, this has to update before the animation kicks in.
It'll be too fast let's see if we can slow it down, maybe hey now, I'm in Camtasia this absolutely proves that I have no life we're looking at this one frame at a time.
So, I'm gonna press the right arrow key.
All right! So, I've just pressed enter and sure enough the 500 does disappear from there, but we already see the animation starting to roll in and the chart hasn't updated.
Now, that's the first thirtieth of a second.
I'll press the right arrow key again and in the second thirtieth of a second the chart has updated, but the 9500 is appearing.
So, Frank there's really no way.
So, kudos to Frank that was a great PR move plausible deniability, but I just don't buy it.
Maybe it was Photoshop, but I still think it was a bad formula.
They inserted the row added the item protected the sheet which gets the 500 out of the formula bar and never updated the formula.
So, there you go.
How to hide the value in the formula bar.
A few more things to match the screen we want to minimize the ribbon and you see that none of the ribbon tabs were selected of course we'd have to sign out as me, sign in as Katie Jordan whoever this person was.
Anyway thanks to David Yanofsky, who broke the original story Brad Sams, who it showed me how to get that value right justified as we as we type it in and also Alex Willhelm on TechCrunch had a great story collecting all this information.
Wanna thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
Hide Value in Formula Bar.
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast.
I'm Bill Jelen.
Today's question is send in by Frank.
He say, is it possible to hide the value that shows in the formula bar.
Yeah, we're back to this Microsoft Excel ad and a lot of people that I respect you're weighing in and I absolutely respect Ed Bott that we were spending way too much time on this.
It's just a treasure thing, but hey, I MrExcel and that's what we do.
Woody Leonard it's not a flaw on Excel it's a poorly doctored screenshot displaying an apparently impossible state and the reason that this keeps coming up is if you look at the ad, there's nothing in the formula bar even though that this cell is selected.
All right! So, here in my last video I talked about this was a poorly contrived formula I still stand by that we're gonna insert a new row after Hotel, we're gonna type Car we're type 500 and control+enter and I agree that this does not look like that however let's select all cells control+1 go back to the Protection tab turn on hidden, uncheck locked, click OK, still showing 500, but then we go to the review tab and turn off or turn on protect sheet, click OK and we now, have exactly what is shown in the ad.
That's how I think it happened.
Now, why do I continue to pour gasoline on this fire.
Well, because this weekend Frank a Microsoft PR guy said hey, no the ad is correct when using Excel autosum recalculates after editing and kudos to Brad Sams who in this video showed how that is theoretically possible I'll put the link in the description here at YouTube, but let's try and replicate that.
So, what Frank is saying is that they properly use the SUM function down here great 9500.
So, then like Brad did we would delete this and actually type dollar sign 500 and not press Enter.
All right and sure enough Excel has not calculated yet because we have not pressed Enter.
However, in this case if what Frank Shaw says is correct then the 500 wouldn't be showing there what would have to happen is when I press ENTER three things happen, the 500 is going to disappear, the car is going to appear in the chart and then the animation is going to kick in at the 9500.
So, the only way that this could have happened the way that Frank says that it happened is when I press ENTER this has to hide, this has to update before the animation kicks in.
It'll be too fast let's see if we can slow it down, maybe hey now, I'm in Camtasia this absolutely proves that I have no life we're looking at this one frame at a time.
So, I'm gonna press the right arrow key.
All right! So, I've just pressed enter and sure enough the 500 does disappear from there, but we already see the animation starting to roll in and the chart hasn't updated.
Now, that's the first thirtieth of a second.
I'll press the right arrow key again and in the second thirtieth of a second the chart has updated, but the 9500 is appearing.
So, Frank there's really no way.
So, kudos to Frank that was a great PR move plausible deniability, but I just don't buy it.
Maybe it was Photoshop, but I still think it was a bad formula.
They inserted the row added the item protected the sheet which gets the 500 out of the formula bar and never updated the formula.
So, there you go.
How to hide the value in the formula bar.
A few more things to match the screen we want to minimize the ribbon and you see that none of the ribbon tabs were selected of course we'd have to sign out as me, sign in as Katie Jordan whoever this person was.
Anyway thanks to David Yanofsky, who broke the original story Brad Sams, who it showed me how to get that value right justified as we as we type it in and also Alex Willhelm on TechCrunch had a great story collecting all this information.
Wanna thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
