Coalesce as a formula

[Roderick_E]

I have a coalesce UDF I use all the time but sometimes I forget to convert to values. Anyone have a formula that will do the same thing so if I leave it as a formula it will not break when I send to outside my Excel app?

P.S. in case someone doesn't know coalesce is usually a sql function that uses the first non-null in a list of strings. In this case, we would want:

=coalesce(cell,cell,cell...) which is how my UDF works. Thanks

 

[Peter_SSs]

I don't know the coalesce function, where your cells might be or exactly what you mean by "break when I send to outside my Excel app" so here are a couple of guesses.

F1 if the cells are in a row or column.
F3 (requires Excel 365 & assumes | character will not be in any of the cells) if not as above.
F4 (if not Excel 365 and assuming | and # characters are not used in the cells)

Excel Workbook
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K
1		abc		def		abc
2
3						de f
4						de f
5
6
7						ab c
8
9
10
11								de f
12										ghi
First Non-Empty

If this is not what you are after, perhaps you could provide your existing udf and/or sample data and expected results?
It might also be useful to know about how many cells might be fed in to the function.