2 Excel workbooks showing different results for the same calculation?

Question

I have a workbook and I made a copy to make changes that should not affect the results (formatting)

However, the new sheet gave me different calculation results when I finished.

The first calculation that is off is a MINVERSE (matrix inverse array calculation) This calculation is completely off. this is a simple MINVERSE function based of a static matrix copied from an external source so the results should be identical.

to be sure, I copied the values of the correct MINVERSE calculation from the other sheet, and I found that other calculations based on the matrix are still slightly off.

The calculation settings are the same and precision as displayed is disabled in both cases.

I have tried placing the files on another machine and the calculations for the 2 sheets are off by exactly the same amount.

Anybody know of any settings that can make two workbooks give different results for the same calculation?

Answer 1

It was a 2 step problem, the original matrix comes from a csv file. So I copied the values to one excel sheet which was correct, it was all text, but for some reason excel formatted some numbers in scientific notation not displaying all digits from the csv file. When I copied the matrix to the other sheet from the first using Unicode text, it lost the precision of the first sheet. If I copy strait from the csv or don't use Unicode text everything is fine. Also, formatting the cells to display 16 or more numeric characters also fixes the problem. Excel was calculating correctly, but the input values lost precision when copying.