Question about empty cells

  • Thread starter Thread starter Zerex71
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Zerex71

Greetings,

I am curious about using empty cells in formulas in other cells - if I
leave a cell empty, is "empty" treated as a special state, or is a
value of 0.0 (or some other null value) implicit? It's not a big
deal, I'm just wondering about computations in other cells that depend
on cells which could be empty. I think I get the same result if I
leave the cell empty, or if it has a 0.0 value in it. I could, if I
wanted to get picky, set up my function to recognize a legitimate zero
and take a different result if there is actually a 0.0 there instead
of the user leaving it empty.

Mike
 
Functions can return a number, text, or a boolean value (or an error),
but not null or empty. How that return value is evaluated depends on the
coercion implicit in the function.

If a numeric argument is expected, the empty cell value is coerced to 0.

If a text argument is expected, the empty cell is coerced to the null
string ("").

If a boolean argument is expected, the empty cell value is coerced to
FALSE.
 
It all depends on what functions the formula uses. Some functions ignore
empty cells while others will evaluate them as a 0 value.

Biff
 
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