this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2026
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I believe the explanation for this is the first cell is formatted as text. And summing text concatenates rather than adds. Then the new value is saved as a number, adding the 3, to get 15.
This is an error that can already happen in Excel and one any experienced Excel user has to look out for when moving between alphanumeric and numeric cell types.
so you're saying people who don't know what they're doing shouldn't use tools they don't understand to do things that could cause huge problems if they go wrong? How dare you admonish the Dunning-Kruger field generator!
I'm saying OP's image is an incomplete picture of the problem which blames Copilot for user error.
ByYourLogic, people shouldn't be using Excel to begin with.
In this case, mayhap copilot made the user error. Who knows, probably not the user using copilot to sum numbers in excel.
It's a meme that hinges on the viewer not knowing Excel, not an actual user error in a business environment.