The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 16, 2026
Filed:
Dec. 29, 2023
Microsoft Technology Licensing, Llc, Redmond, WA (US);
Advait Sarkar, Cambridge, GB;
Sruti Srinivasa Ragavan, Cambridge, GB;
John Herbert Martin Williams, Cambridge, GB;
Ian Zachariah Drosos, Cambridge, GB;
Nicholas Charles Wilson, Cambridge, GB;
Irena Berezovsky, Herzliya, IL;
Lev Solodkin, Herzliya, IL;
Andrew Donald Gordon, Cambridge, GB;
MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC, Redmond, WA (US);
Abstract
Disclosed are novel approaches to debugging a formula in a spreadsheet environment. An execution trace shows step-by-step how a formula is evaluated. Instead of overwhelming users by displaying a step for every atomic evaluation, multiple evaluations are displayed in the same step. This makes the execution trace compact yet intuitive, enabling users to quickly and efficiently understand how the formula is evaluated. Visualizing formula execution in this way also reduces the computing and energy costs of excess recalculations incurred by trial-and-error based debugging techniques.