Just to add to what's already been posted:

From Excel help:

COUNTBLANK
Counts empty cells in a specified range of cells.
Cells with formulas that return "" (empty text) are also counted.

ISBLANK
The ISBLANK function returns the logical value TRUE if value is a reference
to an empty cell; otherwise it returns FALSE.

A1 = =""

=COUNTBLANK(A1) = 1
=ISBLANK(A1) = FALSE

The should have named ISBLANK ISEMPTY

Biff

"Ian P" wrote in message
...
I posted a question the other day about the COUNTBLANK function because
when
I used it to count the blank cells returned by the formula
=IF(a1="","",a1)
it didn't work unless I deleted the contents of a1 twice.

I have now tried this on my home PC running Excel97 and I get exactly the
same fault as I do at work running Excel2000. Interestingly depending on
the
order in which I set up the spreadsheet (either entering the formula first
or
entering the A1 first) I can get the fault to occur on not. So I have
reached the conclusion that there is a fault with this functionality. Bob
Phillips mentioned that COUNTBLANK can't be used to count formulas
returning
"" so is this a change in a later version of Excel?

Ian