thanks for the suggestion. It returns #value. Does that mean that there is
nothing there?

"dlw" wrote:

is there a blank space in the cell, try =code(a1) or whatever the cell is
and see if a number comes up, 32=space.

"cugrngneer" wrote:

I am using the ISBLANK function before comparing values in cells, so that I
don't get a match when there is no data to compare. Excel is returning a
false (implying that the cell contains data), but nothing appears in the cell
being tested. The data being tested by ISBLANK has come from an extract of an
ACCESS database, if that has any bearing on the outcome.