" "
 

What do the empty set of quotes mean in some of the functions and formulas
described here?

empty string. you probably see them mostly in IF statements. Excel won't
display anything on the screen, but it is not the same as entering a zero
value because it has a text format. So you could run into problems if
dependent cells are trying to perform calculations on a cell that returns (or
could return) an empty string.


"Easydoesit" wrote:

What do the empty set of quotes mean in some of the functions and formulas
described here?

It also is not the same as empty or blank, so if you do an ISBLANK test on
it, it fails.

--
HTH

Bob Phillips

"JMB" wrote in message
...
empty string. you probably see them mostly in IF statements. Excel won't
display anything on the screen, but it is not the same as entering a zero
value because it has a text format. So you could run into problems if
dependent cells are trying to perform calculations on a cell that returns
(or
could return) an empty string.


"Easydoesit" wrote:

What do the empty set of quotes mean in some of the functions and
formulas
described here?

What are the advantages in returning an empty string text cell versus just
leaving it blank?

"JMB" wrote in message
...
empty string. you probably see them mostly in IF statements. Excel won't
display anything on the screen, but it is not the same as entering a zero
value because it has a text format. So you could run into problems if
dependent cells are trying to perform calculations on a cell that returns
(or
could return) an empty string.


"Easydoesit" wrote:

What do the empty set of quotes mean in some of the functions and
formulas
described here?

Most of the time, I use it to serve as a conditional for an IF statement. If
you don't tell the IF statement what to return if the condition you are
testing is false, it will return FALSE (a boolean value). I use "" as it
makes the spreadsheet look cleaner. If I have a lot of dependent
calculations that may not like "" and I don't care how clean the spreadsheet
looks, I'll have the IF statement return zero.



"Easydoesit" wrote:

What are the advantages in returning an empty string text cell versus just
leaving it blank?

"JMB" wrote in message
...
empty string. you probably see them mostly in IF statements. Excel won't
display anything on the screen, but it is not the same as entering a zero
value because it has a text format. So you could run into problems if
dependent cells are trying to perform calculations on a cell that returns
(or
could return) an empty string.


"Easydoesit" wrote:

What do the empty set of quotes mean in some of the functions and
formulas
described here?