format changes when copying from one cell to another

[AFN]

I'm sure this is simple, but it is not clear to me...

I am copying the contents of a group of cells that exist on one worksheet to
another. In Sheet2, I tell cell A1 that it should equal Sheet1's A1 value.
That works fine. But if the cell is blank on Sheet1, it comes up as "0" on
Sheet2. I figured it was probably assuming numeric formatting, but when I
right-click > format cell on both Sheet1 and Sheet2, both show up as
"general", so why would Sheet2 take a blank value and populate it with "0"
??

 

[Otto Moehrbach]

I gather than you are putting a formula in one sheet to pick up the value in
some cell of the other sheet. Something like "=Sheet1!A1" (without the
quotes). You will always get a zero if the Sheet1 A1 cell is blank.
You need to change your formula to something like this:
=IF(Sheet1!A1="","",Sheet1!A1)

This will give you a blank cell in the second cell if the first cell is
blank. HTH Otto

 

[AFN]

That's really screwy, but I sure appreciate you telling me that it defaults
to 0 in these situations and suggesting using the IF.