1. Do you mean if the source B6:E6 are all blank, the result must show blank.
2. How about if some are blank and some have value ? What result u need ?
You still need them to be summed up or not.
I believe you gave a good importance of your source data when they are
blank...

try this where the formula will not give a summed value if one cell is blank.

=if(or(b6="",c6="",d6="",e6=""),"",sum(b6:e6))
or
=if(or(b6="",c6="",d6="",e6=""),"incomplete data",sum(b6:e6))

for lookup, try to read the help files for the function limitations.

happy holidays.

"Mar_W" wrote:

Thanks Bernard - that works fine. I sometimes need to sum up values from a
hlookup table and again get zeros with blank cells.

ie -
=SUM(HLOOKUP(BB$3,North_Water_SC,$B19,FALSE))+(HLO OKUP(BB$3,North_Waste_SC,$L15,FALSE))+(HLOOKUP(BB$ 3,North_Long_Cycle,$V9,FALSE))

Have you any ideas for this? Thanks for your help, Marianne

"Bernard Liengme" wrote:

Try =IF(COUNT(B6:E6),SUM(B6:E6),"")
This is NOT an array formula
best wishes
--
Bernard V Liengme
www.stfx.ca/people/bliengme
remove caps from email

"Mar_W" wrote in message
...
Hi, I'm trying to put a simple formula in excel to add up some cells - the
trouble is when the cells are blank, excel still calculates it as a zero.
I
know I can use the following to ignore the blanks
-=IF(SUM(B6:E6)=0,"",SUM(B6:E6))- but sometimes cells B6 to E6 might
contain
true zero scores. I've also tried using
if(isblank(sum(B6:E6)),"",(SUM(B6:E6))) but again it still returns zero.
You'd think it would be something simple but I can't see it and it's
driving
me mad!!!!

Can anyone out there help????