Is EXCEL's Data Table too smart for it's own good?

D

DA

Question for you, please:

In the past, if I wanted to use an EXCEL data table, I was sure that
the "row input" and "column input" cells needed to have values, not
formulas, in them. It needed to be, for example, 3, not even =3,
since the latter is a formula. That made sense to me because you are
asking EXCEL to give you some other cell's result with different
values for this "input" cell. Recently, for other reasons, I replaced
such an input with a formula and, to my surprise, the data table
results did not change and it seems to work anyway, which kind of
blows me away. You would think that EXCEL would object to changing a
cell that has a formula in it, wouldn't you? Generally, there are
many ways for a formual to get the same result (using other precedent
cells) so clearly EXCEL is not varying those precedent cells. It
seems that, for the purpose of the data table results, EXCEL is simply
ignoring the formula and replacing it with the values you ask it to
test.

I am using EXCEL 2003 SP3 in case that matters.

Are any of you seeing the same phenomenon? Does it make sense to
you? Is this a recent update to EXCEL 2003 that was not there
before? As I mentioned above, I alnost surely recall times when the
data table would NOT work, because the input cell had something like =
3*0.5, which I sometimes do, to remind myself how I got to the 1.5
'input' value. But now, it seems to have no problem with the "row
input" or "column input" being a formula.

Thanks
Dean
 

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