1<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 2 3 4 5<!-- 6 *********************************************************************** 7 * 8 * DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS FILE HEADER. 9 * 10 * Copyright 2000, 2010 Oracle and/or its affiliates. 11 * 12 * OpenOffice.org - a multi-platform office productivity suite 13 * 14 * This file is part of OpenOffice.org. 15 * 16 * OpenOffice.org is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify 17 * it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 18 * only, as published by the Free Software Foundation. 19 * 20 * OpenOffice.org is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, 21 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of 22 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the 23 * GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 for more details 24 * (a copy is included in the LICENSE file that accompanied this code). 25 * 26 * You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License 27 * version 3 along with OpenOffice.org. If not, see 28 * <http://www.openoffice.org/license.html> 29 * for a copy of the LGPLv3 License. 30 * 31 ************************************************************************ 32 --> 33 34 35 <helpdocument version="1.0"> 36<meta> 37<topic id="textscalc05empty_cellsxml" indexer="include" status="PUBLISH"> 38<title id="tit" xml-lang="en-US">Handling of Empty Cells</title> 39<filename>/text/scalc/05/empty_cells.xhp</filename> 40</topic> 41</meta> 42<body> 43<bookmark xml-lang="en-US" branch="index" id="bm_id3146799"><bookmark_value>empty cells;handling of</bookmark_value> 44</bookmark><comment>i86303</comment><paragraph role="heading" id="hd_id1502121" xml-lang="en-US" level="1" l10n="NEW"><variable id="empty_cells"><link href="text/scalc/05/empty_cells.xhp">Handling of Empty Cells</link> 45</variable></paragraph> 46 47<paragraph role="paragraph" id="par_id8266853" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">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. </paragraph> 48<paragraph role="paragraph" id="par_id2733542" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">A simple reference to an empty cell is still displayed as numeric 0 but is not necessarily of type numeric anymore, so also comparisons with the referencing cell work as expected. </paragraph> 49<paragraph role="paragraph" id="par_id4238715" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">For the following examples, A1 contains a number, B1 is empty, C1 contains the reference to B1:</paragraph> 50<paragraph role="code" id="par_id8277230" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">A1: 1 B1: <empty> C1: =B1 (displays 0)</paragraph> 51<paragraph role="code" id="par_id4086428" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=B1=0 => TRUE</paragraph> 52<paragraph role="code" id="par_id9024628" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=B1="" => TRUE</paragraph> 53<paragraph role="code" id="par_id3067110" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=C1=0 => TRUE</paragraph> 54<paragraph role="code" id="par_id8841822" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=C1="" => TRUE (previously was FALSE)</paragraph> 55<paragraph role="code" id="par_id4077578" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISNUMBER(B1) => FALSE</paragraph> 56<paragraph role="code" id="par_id9094515" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISNUMBER(C1) => FALSE (previously was TRUE)</paragraph> 57<paragraph role="code" id="par_id396740" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISNUMBER(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;2)) => FALSE (B1)</paragraph> 58<paragraph role="code" id="par_id3859675" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISNUMBER(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;3)) => FALSE (C1, previously was TRUE)</paragraph> 59<paragraph role="code" id="par_id402233" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISTEXT(B1) => FALSE</paragraph> 60<paragraph role="code" id="par_id1623889" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISTEXT(C1) => FALSE</paragraph> 61<paragraph role="code" id="par_id7781914" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISTEXT(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;2)) => FALSE (B1, previously was TRUE)</paragraph> 62<paragraph role="code" id="par_id300912" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISTEXT(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;3)) => FALSE (C1)</paragraph> 63<paragraph role="code" id="par_id9534592" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISBLANK(B1) => TRUE</paragraph> 64<paragraph role="code" id="par_id4969328" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISBLANK(C1) => FALSE</paragraph> 65<paragraph role="code" id="par_id9635914" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISBLANK(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;2)) => TRUE (B1, previously was FALSE)</paragraph> 66<paragraph role="code" id="par_id2476577" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISBLANK(VLOOKUP(1;A1:C1;3)) => FALSE (C1)</paragraph> 67<paragraph role="note" id="par_id4217047" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">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:</paragraph> 68<paragraph role="code" id="par_id2629474" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">A1: <empty></paragraph> 69<paragraph role="code" id="par_id8069704" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">B1: =A1 => displays 0, but is just a reference to an empty cell</paragraph> 70<paragraph role="code" id="par_id4524674" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISNUMBER(A1) => FALSE</paragraph> 71<paragraph role="code" id="par_id4396801" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISTEXT(A1) => FALSE</paragraph> 72<paragraph role="code" id="par_id5293740" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=A1=0 => TRUE</paragraph> 73<paragraph role="code" id="par_id7623828" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=A1="" => TRUE</paragraph> 74<paragraph role="code" id="par_id2861720" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISNUMBER(B1) => FALSE (MS-Excel: TRUE)</paragraph> 75<paragraph role="code" id="par_id9604480" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISTEXT(B1) => FALSE</paragraph> 76<paragraph role="code" id="par_id2298959" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=B1=0 => TRUE</paragraph> 77<paragraph role="code" id="par_id4653767" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=B1="" => TRUE (MS-Excel: FALSE)</paragraph> 78<paragraph role="code" id="par_id8801538" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">C1: =VLOOKUP(...) with empty cell result => displays empty (MS-Excel: displays 0)</paragraph> 79<paragraph role="code" id="par_id6746421" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISNUMBER(VLOOKUP(...)) => FALSE</paragraph> 80<paragraph role="code" id="par_id4876247" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISTEXT(VLOOKUP(...)) => FALSE</paragraph> 81<paragraph role="code" id="par_id7458723" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISNUMBER(C1) => FALSE (MS-Excel: TRUE)</paragraph> 82<paragraph role="code" id="par_id2753379" xml-lang="en-US" l10n="NEW">=ISTEXT(C1) => FALSE</paragraph> 83</body> 84</helpdocument> 85