blank cells having no value

[Steve Hayes]

Hi,
though this is Steve's account it is his wife Val writing with my problem.
Back in the old days of DOS there was a function which allowed you to set all
blank cells as blank - that is = not having a value of Zero.
I am working on Excel 2003 at home and 2007 at work so am at the moment
somewhat confused and cannot find that facility on either system.

What I am trying to do is:
I have two cells one E6 representing "goals For" and another F6 representing
"goals against"
I have the following simple formula. =IF(e6>F6,3,IF(e6=F6,1,0))
this works fine when the figures are in and gives correct figures for a win
draw and loss but because it continues to see blank cells as having zero value
keeps returning a 1 even though there is nothing there.
Can anyone tell me either where I can find the facility to turn off the zero
value on a blank cell or offer an alternative solution. e.g 0-0 is still a
draw and worth 1 point.
any help gratefully received
regards
Val

 

[Dave Peterson]

You could check for scores in the cells to start:

=if(count(e6:f6)<2,"",if(e6>f6, ....

 

[Mike H]

hello Steve's wife Val,

Try this

=IF(COUNT(E6:F6)<2,"",IF(E6>F6,3,IF(E6=F6,1,0)))

Now both cells must be populated for the formula to evaluate
--
Mike

When competing hypotheses are otherwise equal, adopt the hypothesis that
introduces the fewest assumptions while still sufficiently answering the
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