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DavidJonDavis's avatar
DavidJonDavis
Copper Contributor
Sep 04, 2023
Solved

Why is my new workbook not recognizing empty cells as zeroes?

I started working on a new workbook recently.   When writing a formula, I noticed I was getting the "value" error message.  After some trial and error, I realized that the error message is occurrin...
excel
  • Riny_van_Eekelen's avatar
    Riny_van_Eekelen
    Sep 04, 2023

    DavidJonDavis Then those cells aren't really empty. The may contain a single space, an empty sting ("") or another invisible character. Are these cells the result of another formula perhaps? Or were the copied and pasted from the web?

     

    Best to fix this at the source and make sure the cells are really empty. Alternatively use the N function. For instance, if A1 could be empty or contain a number and you want to multiply it by 10, se this:

    =10 * N(A1)

     

    This will return 0 for anything in A1 that is not a number.

     

     

Riny_van_Eekelen's avatar
Riny_van_Eekelen
Platinum Contributor
Sep 04, 2023

DavidJonDavis Then those cells aren't really empty. The may contain a single space, an empty sting ("") or another invisible character. Are these cells the result of another formula perhaps? Or were the copied and pasted from the web?

 

Best to fix this at the source and make sure the cells are really empty. Alternatively use the N function. For instance, if A1 could be empty or contain a number and you want to multiply it by 10, se this:

=10 * N(A1)

 

This will return 0 for anything in A1 that is not a number.

 

 

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