Hi Gary,
Thanks for your help. It does indeed work, but actually only after it
didn't work initially and my discovery of why not! The blank cells weren't
actually blank - they contained a space. Which now explains why my version
didn't work either.
Thanks very much though, I've added my new knowledge to my ever increasing
list of useful Excel things.
Best regards
Lesley

"Gary Brown" wrote:

Since treating the 'dates' as values doesn't seem to be working, that
suggests that, although the items LOOK like dates, they've been imported from
Access as Strings (which have a -0- value).
Try something like...
=IF(LEN(TRIM(B3))=0,A2,TRIM(B3))
--
Hope this helps.
Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Gary Brown


"lesg46" wrote:

I have searched many posts but cant seem to find anything similar, so I am
having to ask for assistance please. Im sure it will be a piece of cake for
someone, given the very in-depth issues Ive been searching through!

I have many workbooks that I may need to apply this to, each with many
thousands of lines.

I am importing this data from an Access database (that I cant modify as
its not mine).

I import each sheet as follows:

B C D E
1 Date Item Qty Identity
2 11/14/2007 Apple 1 Customer A
3 Banana 1 Customer A
4 11/14/2007 Apple 1 Customer B
5 11/14/2007 Apple 1 Customer C
6 Orange 2 Customer C
7 11/14/2007 Orange 1 Customer D

But where the same customer has bought more than one item on a day, the date
is missing for the second item.

I need to create a pivot table based on all this data, however as I have
blank date cells, obviously the table doesnt complete correctly.

I had thought the easiest way to get round this would be to insert a column
before the Date column and insert a formula. I have tried =IF(B30,B3,B2).
i.e. if the cell to the right has a date in it, insert that date, otherwise
insert the date from the row before. (There will never be an instance where
the date for the first item purchased is blank.) However Im obviously
missing something as this doesnt work.

Ive also tried =IF(B30,B3,IF(B3<=0,B2)). But that doesnt work either.

I am very grateful for any help.
Les