Excel 2000

[AP]

When hitting the "Del" key what ANSI character is put into
a cell? When evaluating a formula which results in the
value "", what ANSI value is put into a cell. How do you
get the equivalent of the "Del" key into a cell as the
result of a formula evaluation? There is a difference when
charting the results.
AP

 

[J.E. McGimpsey]

When you delete the contents of a cell with DEL, the cell value is
reset to empty - there's no "character" associated with the cell's
value. Empty is evaluated as zero in a numeric context or as a null
string (string of length zero) in a text context.

When a formula returns the result "", the value is a null string.
Again, there's no character associated with the cell's contents.

In charting, the #N/A error value is ignored, whereas a numeric
(e.g., 0) or text (e.g., "") value is not. Instead of a formula like

=IF(x, y, "")

you can use

=IF(x, y, NA())

If you don't want to see the error values, you can use conditional
formatting to set the font color to the background color:

CF1: =ISNA(A1)



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