Comments on: Excel tip: How to not show zero values for forumla result

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:25:00 +0000

Thanks for the solution, same found elsewhere as well. BUT, I have a total calculated at the bottom of the column (in which the zeros are excluded by the if) and this just hands out VALUE! errors even if some of the cells are non zero, it just doesn’t like them. total formula is =SUM(E32+E34:E40)+(E33*2)/10
Any ideas?

By: TJ

TJ — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:52:05 +0000

Lets say I want to multiply a cell by 10% and if the value is nil I want to keep the cell blank, how do I do that?

By: Andy Bailey

Andy Bailey — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:25:01 +0000

try typing it out by hand, if you copy and paste from here the quotes will be different to those that you use in excel

By: N Bibi

N Bibi — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:13:47 +0000

Hey again Andy
Tried your formula out but Excel doesn’t seem to like the quotation marks at all.
Any alternative methods?

By: Andy Bailey

Andy Bailey — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 11:49:13 +0000

n bibi: just use an if statement in column d:
=IF(c1=”",”",sum(b1-c1))

this says if column C is empty dont do anything, if there is something there then do the formula to work out the result

By: N Bibi

N Bibi — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 11:03:15 +0000

Hi Andy

I think you’ve actually tackled my question within the thread but I’m not quite sure how to extrapolate your answer into my sheet… so a little help please

I have a simple spreadsheet which I am updating on a week to week basis.
In column B I have a target, column C, the actual value (this is the column I update) and column D contains a formula to work out the deficit. The problem is that whilst Column C is empty, the formula in column D takes the C values as zero and produces an answer. What I would like, if it is at all possible, is to work out how to ignore row C if it contains no value (to give no result in column D) and only use the deficit formula if there are values in C. I have similar cells across the spreadsheet and would really appreciate an understanding of what it is that each part of your equation actually means so that I can translate it into other cells too.

Thank you so much in advance.

By: Marcus Eriksson

Marcus Eriksson — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:37:29 +0000

Another, perhaps more useful way, is to use custom formatting (right click, choose Format Cell…). If you input for example 0;[Red]-0; you will get black positive number, red negative and nothing if it is zero.

By: Andy Bailey

Andy Bailey — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:20:51 +0000

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:01:23 +0000

Hi Andy.
Painful… I’ts always the obvious. Thanks Andy.

By: Andy Bailey

Andy Bailey — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:07:24 +0000

if the contents of b3 are showing 8 then b9 will see that as a text value and not a number so it wont be able to do sum on it.

for an if statment, it needs to output a numeric value if you want to use the contents as values in other formulas