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General discussion

Excel2007 forcing me to use IMSUB

Feb 25, 2010 7:45PM PST

If i have +1 in one cell and +1 in another cell,
and i want to minus one cell from another, then the only way it will work is if i use IMSUB

Only a problem with MINUS sums... wierd... any help GREATLY appreciated.

Discussion is locked

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Can you tell us more?
Feb 25, 2010 8:24PM PST

I haven't migrated to Excel 2007 yet, so I can't test this.

But can you tell us more?

If cell A1 holds 1 (automatically assumed as +1), and cell A2 holds the same, what happens if you activate cell A3, mouse click cell A1, press the - (minus key) on the keyboard, then mouse click cell A2?

Does that work, or if not, what happens?

Mark

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Must use IMSUB
Feb 25, 2010 8:52PM PST

It comes back as an error saying it cannot calculate and I must use IMSUB. Wierd. Not with pluses, just minuses.

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Strange
Feb 26, 2010 1:58AM PST

I can see I am going to struggle with this.

There has been a previous discussion on the use of IMSUB in these forums here;
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6615_102-0.html?messageID=2758258#2758258

That post is by Kees who provides a link to a Microsoft description of what the IMSUB function is. It's an engineering function for manipulating and calculating complex numbers. That's about as much as I know about IMSUB.

But why does your Excel think it is dealing with complex numbers? All I can think of is that those cells, (or all cells in the sheet), have been formatted to hold complex numbers. I don't even know if that is possible.

In my own Excel, (I can't access it at the moment), if I highlight a cell then click the Format button in the menu bar, then goto Numbers, I can select what type of cell this will be. If you can do the same with Excel's ribbon menu system, change the format of the cell(s) to Normal, or Numbers, or similar.

Other than that, I cannot offer much else.

Mark