what does "" signify in an Excel formula

[Guest]

Can anyone help?

 

[Guest]

It literally means nothing

=IF(A1=""," It's empty","data found")

So the above formula looks if A1="" i.e. nothing
and if that true returns 'It's empty".

Mike

 

[KL]

Can anyone help?

It means: text string of zero-length. In the formulae it is typically used
to emulate empty cells (although it is not quite the same) , e.g.
=IF(A1>0,A1,""), or to convert a value to text, e.g. =A1&""

--
KL
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[KL]

Hi Mike,

It literally means nothing

=IF(A1=""," It's empty","data found")

So the above formula looks if A1="" i.e. nothing
and if that true returns 'It's empty".

This isn't quite correct. In actual fact "" doesn't mean Empty at all, it
just looks like empty. A cell is only empty if it literally contains
nothing - neither constants nor formulae.

Regards
--
KL
[MVP - Microsoft Excel]
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Profile: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Kirill