Yes!!! this works. Thanks very much JMB, this works well and I have learnt
something new.
Ciao, Frank

"JMB" wrote:

Perhaps your formula can return a 0, but just display "" to retain the looks
of the project.

Try Format/Cells/Custom and enter
0;-0;""

positive and negative values s/b displayed as such, but 0 s/b displayed as
"". However, the cell will retain the numeric value of 0 so should not
affect your formulae.


"Frank Winston" wrote:

Thank you all for replies so far; all on the same track. Ok, it is true, the
"" is treated as text, which is greater than a number. The behaviour with a
genuinely blank cell is different: it is treated as zero.
I don't want to use 0 instead of blank because it will spoil the look of the
program. I only want a number to appear in the cell if certain conditions are
met. If they aren't I want the cell to be blank, not have a zero in there.
I'm sure there is a way around this and will keep looking.
Thanks again,
Frank

"Teethless mama" wrote:

Try to substitute "" with 0
any text is greater than A number
example: A1 =me, B1 =3
formula A1B1 (the answere is TRUE)

"Frank Winston" wrote:

I have a cell formula that returns either a number or "" (blank). This works
fine but when I try to compare the result with another number to see which is
greater, I'm having trouble figuring out how Excel treats the result. If the
formula returned a number (say 2.0) and the other cell contained say 3.0,
then Excel can correctly recognise that 32. However, if the result was "",
then it says that ""3. I don't know why this is. You would think that ""
would be treated as zero which would be less than 3, not greater than.