"Blank" doesn't mean: Looks blank.
It means: Contains no value whatsoever.

See if this helps:
Clear the contents of A1, then
B1: =ISBLANK(A1)

Now, put an apostrophe in A1
Next, put "" in A1

Post back if you still have questions
***********
Regards,
Ron

XL2002, WinXP-Pro


"Robin Krupp" wrote:

I am doing a vlookup where i throwing in a "" if there is an error, what im
trying to do is do a past special and skip blanks but all the values get over
written . excel must be treating the cell as not blank. even after i paste
sepcial values in same row im doing vlookupo and then try it . it still
wants to over write cells where no match was found ... any ideas