I understand you to say that you copy cells that have nothing in them
and do a Edit|Paste Special|Values and get zeroes corresponding to those
empty cells.

If this is correct, then please specify the version of Excel you are
using (I have not seen this behavior in any version of Excel that I have
used). If my restatement is not correct, then please describe more
completely what your situation is.

Note that no cell containing a formula is empty. If instead of copying
the original empty cells, you have formula in your summary sheet that
points to the original location, then that formula will return zero
where the original cell is empty.

You might also check that in Tools|Options|View, Zero values is checked,
so that you will see actual zeros that there.

Jerry

Baseball Greg wrote:

I need to bring numeric values forward from ten separate spreadsheets (survey
results) to a "helper spreadsheet" in order to calculate the mode of these
values for each survey question. I have data from two surveys and the values
are brought forward with no problems when I use Paste Special. However, when
I attempt to copy and past special the cells for the remaining eight survey
spreadsheets (for which no data is currently present) the result that is
copied to the "helper spreadsheet" is a zero rather than a blank field. The
zero isthen identified as a value and all my summary data (brought forward to
a separate "Summary" worksheet) indicates zero as the mode for each of the
survey questions. I appreciate any help you can offer.

Best regards,

Greg