Instead of a straight link, use something like this:

=IF(Sheet1!A1="","",Sheet1!A1)

This will return a blank if A1 in Sheet1 is blank, and blanks will be
ignored by your AVERAGE formula.

Hope this helps.

Pete

On Sep 23, 12:50*am, DickS wrote:
When I link a blank cell in sheet one to another sheet (two) it treats that
cell in sheet two as if it has a 0 in it when calculating an average. *No 0
shows in the cell and it does not matter if I check or uncheck the "show a 0
in cells that have a 0 value" advanced option