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 B1: <Empty>	C1: =B1	Displays 0
	=B1=0	TRUE
	=B1=""	TRUE
	=C1=0	TRUE
	=C1=""	TRUE (previously was FALSE)
	=ISNUMBER(B1)	FALSE
	=ISNUMBER(C1)	FALSE (previously was TRUE)
	=ISNUMBER(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;2))	FALSE (B1)
	=ISNUMBER(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;3))	FALSE (C1, previously was TRUE)
	=ISTEXT(B1)	FALSE
	=ISTEXT(C1)	TRUE
	=ISTEXT(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;2))	FALSE (B1, previously was TRUE)
	=ISTEXT(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;3))	FALSE (C1)
	=ISBLANK(B1)	TRUE
	=ISBLANK(C1)	TRUE
	=ISBLANK(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;2))	TRUE (B1, previously was FALSE)
	=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)	FALSE
	=ISTEXT(A1)	FALSE
	=A1=0	TRUE
	=A1=""	TRUE
	=ISNUMBER(B1)	FALSE (Microsoft Excel: TRUE)
	=ISTEXT(B1)	FALSE
	=B1=0	TRUE
	=B1=""	TRUE (Microsoft Excel: FALSE)
	C1: =VLOOKUP(...) with empty cell result	displays empty (Microsoft Excel: displays 0)
	=ISNUMBER(VLOOKUP(...))	FALSE
	=ISTEXT(VLOOKUP(...))	FALSE
	=ISNUMBER(C1)	FALSE (Microsoft Excel: TRUE)
	=ISTEXT(C1)	FALSE