Y2K: Millennium Advisor Finds and Analyzes Spreadsheets for Year 2000 Issues

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, August 24, 1998

The software package Millennium Advisor for spreadsheets was announced Monday by Cellutions, Incorporated to find and analyze spreadsheets for Year 2000 transition issues.

Millennium Advisor locates and scans the spreadsheets utilized in daily operations to make decisions, track orders, etc. across a wide variety of formats and PC desktop and server systems.

The program identifies data, formulas or other situations where incorrect results may be obtained due to assumptions involving whether a two-digit year entry refers to a year in the 20th or 21st century. PCs are not immune from the "Year 2000 Problem" or "Millennium Bug" often attributed to mainframe systems.

"Many organizations do not have an inventory of the spreadsheets they have developed over time or what assumptions went into them for the handling of date values," said Donald Flannery, president of cellutions, incorporated. "This problem is magnified by the sharing or migration of spreadsheets between different spreadsheet programs and versions with different assumptions for handling dates."

Millennium Advisor supports PCs running DOS 3.1 or later, Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows 95/98, and Windows NT 3.51 or later. The package supports spreadsheets produced by Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Works, Lotus 1-2-3, and Corel Quattro Pro. Additional platforms and capabilities are under development.

The package consists of two components: (1) a high-speed Scanner to locate and analyze spreadsheets and (2) an expert Advisor to consolidate multiple PC and server scan results to produce an Action Plan, prioritized by risk, to guide correction efforts performed by end users or technical staff. Since many different spreadsheet formats could be found, scanning capability for all supported spreadsheets is included and dynamically invoked.

Millennium Advisor does not require any spreadsheet programs to read spreadsheet files. It also supports scanning spreadsheets stored within compressed files such as those produced by the popular PKWARE, Inc. PKZIP software.

Licensing is based on the number of PCs and servers. Detailed information is available through the cellutions home page at http://www.cellutions.com or via e-mail at cells@ibm.net.