I have a parent spreadsheet in tab 1 and on seperate tabs I have chunks of
the information through paste special and paste link. When the parent cell
is empty, the paste link command is putting a zero in instead of leaving it
blank. This is messing up my averages. I have tried changing the category
in format cells but this has no effect.

I anyone knows the answer it'd be much appreciated :)

You need to edit the link, if it for instance looks like

=Sheet2!$A$1


then change it to


=IF(Sheet2!$A$1="","",Sheet2!$A$1)


Of course if there can be no zeros in your average then you can change the
average formula


=AVERAGE(IF(A2:A100<0,A2:A100))

or if there can be no zeros nor negative values

=AVERAGE(IF(A2:A1000,A2:A100))


both formulas entered with ctrl + shift & enter


--


Regards,


Peo Sjoblom





--


Regards,


Peo Sjoblom


"upsidedown_pw" wrote in message
...
I have a parent spreadsheet in tab 1 and on seperate tabs I have chunks of
the information through paste special and paste link. When the parent
cell
is empty, the paste link command is putting a zero in instead of leaving
it
blank. This is messing up my averages. I have tried changing the
category
in format cells but this has no effect.

I anyone knows the answer it'd be much appreciated :)

One option is to use this kind of link formula:
=IF(Sheet2!A1="","",Sheet2!A1)
which will return null strings (text) for any blank cells
(Average will ignore text)

Or, as-is (ie with the zeros),
you could use a conditional average,
eg: =AVERAGE(IF(B1:B70,B1:B7))
which has to be array-entered (press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER)
--
Max
Singapore
http://savefile.com/projects/236895
xdemechanik
---
"upsidedown_pw" wrote:
I have a parent spreadsheet in tab 1 and on seperate tabs I have chunks of
the information through paste special and paste link. When the parent cell
is empty, the paste link command is putting a zero in instead of leaving it
blank. This is messing up my averages. I have tried changing the category
in format cells but this has no effect.

I anyone knows the answer it'd be much appreciated :)

Thanks to both of you. A conditional average wont work because I have some
values of zero that I want to include. Its just the data thats not been
input into the parent sheet that I dont want included.

One question though, whats the difference between be using the $ and not?

"Max" wrote:

One option is to use this kind of link formula:
=IF(Sheet2!A1="","",Sheet2!A1)
which will return null strings (text) for any blank cells
(Average will ignore text)

Or, as-is (ie with the zeros),
you could use a conditional average,
eg: =AVERAGE(IF(B1:B70,B1:B7))
which has to be array-entered (press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER)
--
Max
Singapore
http://savefile.com/projects/236895
xdemechanik
---
"upsidedown_pw" wrote:
I have a parent spreadsheet in tab 1 and on seperate tabs I have chunks of
the information through paste special and paste link. When the parent cell
is empty, the paste link command is putting a zero in instead of leaving it
blank. This is messing up my averages. I have tried changing the category
in format cells but this has no effect.

I anyone knows the answer it'd be much appreciated :)

.. whats the difference between using the $ and not?
$ signs makes the cell ref absolute, ie fixed
Eg In B1: =$A$1 will fix it to A1,
ie the ref won't change when you copy B1 across or down
--
Max
Singapore
http://savefile.com/projects/236895
xdemechanik
---