A formula cannot return a true blank cell. You have written a space with
your " " output, so the cell is certainly neither blank nor empty.
The best you can do is to change your =IF(ISBLANK(A1)," ",1) to
=IF(ISBLANK(A1),"",1) or to =IF(A1="","",1) and then you will be writing an
empty string.
Change your =ISBLANK(A1) test to =A1=""
--
David Biddulph

"bearspa" wrote in message
...
I'm having a problem inserting a blank in a cell using a function so that
another formula that refers to this blank reads it as a blank.

For example, if A1 is a blank cell:

Formula Result

=ISBLANK(A1) TRUE
=IF(ISBLANK(A1)," ",1)
=ISBLANK(A3) FALSE

In the above example, even though =IF(ISBLANK(A1)," ",1) shows a blank
cell
in A3, a reference to it in another formula shows that Excel does not
think
it is blank.

How do you write a formula so that there is truly nothing in the cell as a
result?