null value VS empty cell VS "" VS 0 VS blank cell

[Legacy 146544]

Hi excellers!

Many times when working with excel, I find myself in trouble when working with empty cells. I ask myself questions like; when is a cell empty or blank? When does it have null value? Does excel evaluate those as the same? And so on!

A couple concrete questions:
If in cell A2 is the following formula:
=IF(A1=4,"","cell A1 is not 4")
When A1 is not 4, is cell A2 empty? Or is it filled with an empty text string?

And if in cell A3 is the formula:
=IF(ISBLANK(A2),"A2 is blank","A2 is not blank")
Can A3 ever show the else condition? Since cell A2 is filled with a formula, can it ever be blank?

I wonder if you guys have some usefull working logics on this,

Cheers!

 

[digitz]

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</td> <td style="width: 63.8pt; padding: 0cm; height: 15pt;" width="85"> N2
</td> <td style="width: 2cm; padding: 0cm; height: 15pt;" valign="top" width="76"> Q2
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</td> <td style="width: 63.8pt; padding: 0cm; height: 15pt;" width="85"> blank
</td> <td style="width: 2cm; padding: 0cm; height: 15pt;" valign="top" width="76"> blank
</td> </tr> <tr style="height: 15pt;"> <td style="width: 63.8pt; padding: 0cm; height: 15pt;" width="85"> not blank
</td> <td style="width: 63.8pt; padding: 0cm; height: 15pt;" width="85"> blank
</td> <td style="width: 2cm; padding: 0cm; height: 15pt;" valign="top" width="76"> 0
</td> </tr> <tr style="height: 15pt;"> <td style="width: 63.8pt; padding: 0cm; height: 15pt;" width="85"> blank
</td> <td style="width: 63.8pt; padding: 0cm; height: 15pt;" width="85"> not blank
</td> <td style="width: 2cm; padding: 0cm; height: 15pt;" valign="top" width="76"> blank
</td> </tr> <tr style="height: 15pt;"> <td style="width: 63.8pt; padding: 0cm; height: 15pt;" width="85"> not blank
</td> <td style="width: 63.8pt; padding: 0cm; height: 15pt;" width="85"> not blank
</td> <td style="width: 2cm; padding: 0cm; height: 15pt;" valign="top" width="76"> M2*N2/2
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[jasonb75]

How about this:
=IF(ISBLANK(N2),"",(M2*N2/2))

If N2 is blank, blank, else M2*N2/2
Now at the same time, if M2 is not blank, display 0

That one will work fine as it is.

 

[digitz]

Yep!
It's all good to go!

Thanks for your help.

 

[Thunk]

Hey, on this topic of empty vs null: I like to use the Ctrl key + arrow keys to navigate quickly through sparse data. As far as I can tell, the Ctrl + arrow will skip to the last cell in a direction that has the same empty or not status as the rest.

I feel pretty confident that there is no way to make a formula produce an empty cell directly (but if i'm wrong, please say), and while i think there may be a way to make a formula produce an empty cell indirectly, i can't figure it out. My thought was that a formula could produce a blank cell with a "" (as described above) and then a Copy-Paste(value) would convert that "" into a truly empty cell (in the sense that you can Ctrl+Arrow over it to the next populated cell), but that is not the case.

Anyone know how to create an empty cell with a formula?