what I am trying to do is calculate the number of people I have on duty.
This is on a schedule showing vacation, sick, holiday, ect. So before I make
my assignments, I want to know how many bodies I have available to assign to
a position. When the cell is empty, it should count as 1 body, if I have put
V, H, S or something in the cell, I want it to take away from the total
available to me.

"joeu2004" wrote:

On Jan 27, 2:50 pm, Rae wrote:
How do I make this formula-if cell empty +1 if cell has
any value -1

First, you need to decide if you mean "really empty" (no formula and
no value) or "appears empty" (no formula, or a formula that returns
"").

Use ISBLANK(A1) to test for "really empty". Use A1="" to test for
"appears empty". I use the latter because it is more general,
covering both cases.

=if(A1="", 1, -1)

If you want the "+" sign in the first case, you can use the custom
format "+0;-0" (without the quotes).