David Gurney wrote:I am using Appleworks 6.2.4 with Mac OSX 10.3.9 Panther installed and when using the MAX and MIN formulae find that incorrect results are produced. Additionally when trying to clear the column which has been affected I get the "spinning ball" syndrome which means that the only way of getting out of the problem is to "Force Quit"
The column of figures which I am reviewing consists of a range .85 - 1.25 and the spreadsheet is set up to produce answers to two decimal places. The formulae are entered in the following manner:-
=MAX(A1,A10) or =MIN(A1,A10)
Can anyone kindly advise me if this is a common problem and how it can be rectified?
Hi David,
The spinning beachball is probably due to the Recent Items bug.
Go to Mac HD > Users> yourname > Documents > AppleWorks User Data > Starting Points > Recent Items.
Open the Recent Items folder and delete all or most of the items there.
Items in this folder are aliases to the files they name. Deleting them has no effect on the actual files, but will result in a performance improvement.
As written, one of your formulas should return the value contained in cell A1, the other should return the value in cell A10. The comma in the function's argument separates individual values in a list, so your formulas consider values in only those two cells.
To make the formula consider all values in the range A1 to A10, replace the comma with two periods.
=MAX(A1..A10) or =MIN(A1..A10)
Although your spreadsheet
presents results to two decimal places, it does not necessarily
produce answers to (only) that precision. AppleWorks calculations are carried out and produce results precise to 15 places, without regard to where the decimal is located. They are displayed to a maximum 11 places, again without regard to the location of the decimal. Setting the number format of a cell to Fixed, Precision 2 rounds the result
displayed to the nearer hundredth, but
does not change the number actually contained in the cell.
If the result is to be read by the user, this makes little if any practical difference. But if the number is to be used in further calculations,the results may not agree with what the user expects from what is visible in the cell(s).
Regards,
Barry
PS: Whenever AppleWorks crashes or is Force Quit, there is a possibility that preference files have been corrupted. Deleting the preferences files is a suggested procedure in these circumstances.
You'll find AW's prefs files in Users > yourname > Library > Preferences.
Look for and delete the file com.apple.appleworks.plist
Look for and open the folder AppleWorks.
In that folder, select and delete both cache files and the AppleWorks Preferences file.
AppleWorks ButtonBars is also a preferences file. It rarely causes trouble, though, so if you have made changes to the Button Bar, AND have no problems that you can associate with the Button Bar, leave that file where it is. Otherwise, delete it.
AppleWorks will build new, clean versions of the preferences files as it needs that.
B