Handling of Empty Cells
In older versions of the software, empty cells were forced to numeric 0 in some contexts and to empty string in others, except in direct comparison where =A1=0 and =A1="" both resulted in TRUE if A1 was empty. Emptiness now is inherited until used, so both =VLOOKUP(...)=0 and =VLOOKUP(...)="" give TRUE if the lookup resulted in an empty cell being returned.
A simple reference to an empty cell is still displayed as numeric 0 but is not necessarily of type numeric anymore, so also comparisons with the referencing cell work as expected.
For the following examples, A1 contains a number, B1 is empty, C1 contains the reference to B1:
|
Case |
Formula |
Results and comments |
|
A1: 1 |
C1: =B1 |
Displays 0 |
|
=B1=0 |
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|
=B1="" |
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=C1=0 |
||
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=C1="" |
TRUE (previously was FALSE) |
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=ISNUMBER(B1) |
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=ISNUMBER(C1) |
FALSE (previously was TRUE) |
|
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=ISNUMBER(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;2)) |
FALSE (B1) |
|
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=ISNUMBER(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;3)) |
FALSE (C1, previously was TRUE) |
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=ISTEXT(B1) |
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=ISTEXT(C1) |
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=ISTEXT(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;2)) |
FALSE (B1, previously was TRUE) |
|
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=ISTEXT(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;3)) |
FALSE (C1) |
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=ISBLANK(B1) |
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=ISBLANK(C1) |
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=ISBLANK(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;2)) |
TRUE (B1, previously was FALSE) |
|
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=ISBLANK(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;3)) |
FALSE (C1) |
Note that Microsoft Excel behaves different and always returns a number as the result of a reference to an empty cell or a formula cell with the result of an empty cell. For example:
|
Case |
Formula |
Results and comments |
|
A1: <Empty> |
B1: =A1 |
Displays 0, but is just a reference to an empty cell. |
|
=ISNUMBER(A1) |
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=ISTEXT(A1) |
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=A1=0 |
||
|
=A1="" |
||
|
=ISNUMBER(B1) |
FALSE (Microsoft Excel: TRUE) |
|
|
=ISTEXT(B1) |
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=B1=0 |
||
|
=B1="" |
TRUE (Microsoft Excel: FALSE) |
|
|
C1: =VLOOKUP(...) with empty cell result |
displays empty (Microsoft Excel: displays 0) |
|
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=ISNUMBER(VLOOKUP(...)) |
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=ISTEXT(VLOOKUP(...)) |
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=ISNUMBER(C1) |
FALSE (Microsoft Excel: TRUE) |
|
|
=ISTEXT(C1) |