Just-Patched Excel Doesn't Add Up

Ya know Microsoft, a spreadsheet that doesn't calculate properly isn't of much use.

The original patch was (what else) a security update. It was released earlier this week on Patch Tuesday. Unfortunately, that patch causes another issue, where in Excel 2003, calculations will be incorrect when a Real Time Data source is used in a user-defined Visual Basic for Applications function.

The incorrect result is usually zero. There is a workaround given in the KB article:

To work around this issue, run the function on each cell individually instead of on the array of cells.

Real Time Data was added to Excel in the 2002 version of the spreadsheet, and allows users to have data automatically pushed into a spreadsheet from a variety of sources, including web sites.

On the Microsoft Security Response Center blog (just where I would look for an Excel issue), Bill Sisk posted this bit of information:

Our teams are testing a fix and will release it once it meets our quality bar for broad distribution.

Wait, didn't the original patch have to meet that quality bar as well?