I learnt a lot working on OpenSolver 1.1beta. For example, did you know that Excel’s union operator can produce ranges with duplicate cells!? Pearson describes the problem here. (We haven’t implemented this yet in OpenSolver as it may slow things down, but will do if it causes problems.) I also realised that Excel allows ranges (such as for the decision variables) like “A1:A5,A2:A6” that internally overlap; OpenSolver now internally fixes ranges like this when they occur.
I’ve always told my students that Solver’s “Assume Non-Negative” applies zero lower bounds to all the variables. I was wrong, as demonstrated by Solver’s new wording “Make Unconstrained Variables Non-Negative”. Lower bounds are only applied to variables that don’t have ‘explicit’ lower bounds set for them in the constraints. ‘Explicit’ here means the variable appears in the left hand side of a constraint which has a right hand side specified by a range or a constant. However, my preliminary tests suggest that Excel 2010 also requires that the left hand side of the constraint not include any non-decision variables. This can lead to different solutions when you move to Excel 2010, which seems rather strange. OpenSolver used to apply zero lower bounds to all the variables. The new version now implements the 2007 approach; you can see this in the new Bounds section in the .lp files.
Finally, did you know the right hand side of a constraint can contain a formula? This is a direct consequence of Excel allowing formulae to be entered as a “named range” (not that it is actually a range!). OpenSolver now handles these (not that I’d suggest you use this obscure feature).