The text trap: If you select numbers and the status bar stays blank (or only shows the Count), your numbers are formatted as text—and Excel can't sum words! This tells you that you should click the ...

Excel's grid feels like an endless canvas until you hit the boundaries of row 1,048,576 or column XFD. These limits aren't random—they're digital walls shaped by history, hardware, and binary logic.

That’s how the Tricolor Holdings founder, in a secretly recorded August phone call, described the blunder that ultimately exposed what authorities allege was a more than $1 billion fraud.