Handling of Empty Cells
In older versions of the software, empty cells were forced to numeric 0 in some contexts and to empty string in others, except in direct comparison where =A1=0 and =A1="" both resulted in TRUE if A1 was empty. Emptiness now is inherited until used, so both =VLOOKUP(...)=0 and =VLOOKUP(...)="" give TRUE if the lookup resulted in an empty cell being returned.
A simple reference to an empty cell is still displayed as numeric 0 but is not necessarily of type numeric any more, so also comparisons with the referencing cell work as expected.
For the following examples, A1 contains a number, B1 is empty, C1 contains the reference to B1:
| Case | Formula | Results and comments |
|---|---|---|
| A1: 1B1: | C1: =B1 | Displays 0 |
| =B1=0 | TRUE | |
| =B1="" | TRUE | |
| =C1=0 | TRUE | |
| =C1="" | TRUE (previously was FALSE) | |
| =ISNUMBER(B1) | FALSE | |
| =ISNUMBER(C1) | FALSE (previously was TRUE) | |
| =ISNUMBER(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;2)) | FALSE (B1) | |
| =ISNUMBER(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;3)) | FALSE (C1, previously was TRUE) | |
| =ISTEXT(B1) | FALSE | |
| =ISTEXT(C1) | TRUE | |
| =ISTEXT(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;2)) | FALSE (B1, previously was TRUE) | |
| =ISTEXT(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;3)) | FALSE (C1) | |
| =ISBLANK(B1) | TRUE | |
| =ISBLANK(C1) | TRUE | |
| =ISBLANK(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;2)) | TRUE (B1, previously was FALSE) | |
| =ISBLANK(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;3)) | FALSE (C1) |
Note that Microsoft Excel behaves different and always returns a number as the result of a reference to an empty cell or a formula cell with the result of an empty cell. For example:
| Case | Formula | Results and comments |
|---|---|---|
| A1: | B1: =A1 | Displays 0, but is just a reference to an empty cell. |
| =ISNUMBER(A1) | FALSE | |
| =ISTEXT(A1) | FALSE | |
| =A1=0 | TRUE | |
| =A1="" | TRUE | |
| =ISNUMBER(B1) | FALSE (Microsoft Excel: TRUE) | |
| =ISTEXT(B1) | FALSE | |
| =B1=0 | TRUE | |
| =B1="" | TRUE (Microsoft Excel: FALSE) | |
| C1: =VLOOKUP(...) with empty cell result | displays empty (Microsoft Excel: displays 0) | |
| =ISNUMBER(VLOOKUP(...)) | FALSE | |
| =ISTEXT(VLOOKUP(...)) | FALSE | |
| =ISNUMBER(C1) | FALSE (Microsoft Excel: TRUE) | |
| =ISTEXT(C1) | FALSE |