Hi!

There is a check box there that says Exclude
Blanks. "" is a zero length string, not blank,
so my value lists are long and empty.

Actually, it says Ignore blank but that's not what it's for. It doesn't mean
to exclude from the list any blank or empty cells.

How can I make my formula return nothing instead of a zero length string?

You can't.

The only way to get rid of the blanks in your drop down list is to create a
source that doesn't contain any blanks.

Biff

"Brad" wrote in message
...
Thanks for taking the time to read my question.

I have a column of formulas like this:

=if(B1="","",B1)

This works fine, but I want to use this column as the row source for a
value
list from Data - Validation. There is a check box there that says Exclude
Blanks. "" is a zero length string, not blank, so my value lists are long
and
empty.

How can I make my formula return nothing instead of a zero length string?

Thanks,

Brad