Blank Cells

[David Arthurs]

When is a cell blank ?
I want to confirm a cell is blank. For example Cell A1=T(1) a blank text
In A2 = ISBLANK(A1)
This returns FALSE. Should it be TRUE. If not how do you force a cell to
be blank if it has a formula in it so that COUNTA and COUNTBLANK return
the correct result as if those cells were blank.

[Harlan Grove]

"David Arthurs" wrote...

This is a conceptual issue that affects all spreadsheets. This same issue is
raised (often) in Excel newsgroups. This is just how most spreadsheets have
always worked. I've never come across one that didn't work like this. I suppose
if the SAS or SPSS provide spreadsheet front-ends, they might provide missing
value support, but this just isn't a standard part of mass-market spreadsheet
functionality.

For good or ill, in spreadsheets a 'BLANK' cell means a cell with no contents at
all. If a cell contains a formula, then ipso facto it isn't blank. There is *NO*
work-around for this short of writing your own spreadsheet program (or rewriting
OpenOffice.org Calc to add a #BLANK pseudovalue (like #N/A), and rewriting *ALL*
worksheet functions to handle #BLANK values the same as truly blank cells (i.e.,
cell with no contents at all).

The closest you'll get without rolling your own spreadsheet is returning
zero-length strings ("" or T(0)) when you want cells to appear blank, and use
COUNTIF(Range;"<>") rather than COUNTA and COUNTIF(Range;"=")+COUNTBLANK(Range)
rather than COUNTBLANK(Range) alone.

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