blank cells

[R.VENKATARAMAN]

this is a question on fundamentals of excel

for e.g. cell A2 is blank. I confirm whether A2 is blank by going to
another cell and typing <=isblank(A2)> which gives <true>. But when I go to
another cell and click edit-clear-all (to celar any formats etc) and type
<=A2> it does NOT give a blank cell but gives <0>(zero).

If I copy and paste a blank cell to another cell it gives blank.

the above descrepancy gives problem in creating formulas. for e.g.
A2 is 2, A3 is blank
If I type in some other cell the formula <=IF(A2=2,A3," ")> it gives 0 and
not Blank which A3 is .
is it because if the condition is true it is blank and even if it is false
it is blank.

this formula may be trivial but I have a formula which gives this type of
problem.


Elucidation please.

 

[Guest]

This is a fundamental Excel need, in order for basic mathematics to work in
Excel it is important for any blank cells to have the value of "0", otherwise
SUMing (A1:A10) would fail if some of the cells were truely blank. If you
enter "=A2" and A2 is blank because you are expecting a result (otherwise you
would not have entered the formulae) the assumed "0" is displayed.

Hope this helps.

Kevin