MS Excel 2007's DEC2BIN function begins to fail with decimal numbers somewhere between 2^8 and 2^9, while the DEC2HEX function begins to fail between 2^38 and 2^39.



Many engineering applications could benefit from a much larger range for these functions. Support up to at least 2^64 (but why don't you shoot for 2^128 to give yourselves some margin) would be nice for future versions, including all permutations of DEC <--> HEX, DEC <--> BIN, and HEX <--> BIN.

My present workaround (doing lots of intermediate division-and-modulus operations parsing big numbers into smaller numbers that can fit MS Excel's HEX/BIN limitations) is a huge pain in the arse.

Also, to improve readability, the DEC2BIN and HEX2BIN functions should have a passed parameter that lets the result be:

contiguous binary ("...11111101100101100111001010111010010001010001. ..") or

nibble-separated binary ("..._1111_1101_1001_0110_0111_0010_1011_1010_0100 _0101_0001_...").

/* Note: I'm not expecting any help on this.
I merely post the issue here in the hope that someone at Microsoft reads these forums for product suggestions & feedback.
. . . or is there a better place for that? */