If Statement help, please

R

Ross

Hi all

I have what seemed to me to be a simple task: If both A1 and
B1 have nothing in them, show nothing, but if either cell has something in
it, do the math...A1+B1. So I wrote: if(A1+B1="","",A1+B1). Unfortunately,
it'll do the math, but it shows a zero for the rows that have no input. Can
someone help?? And explain why??

Thanks very much
 
D

Dave Peterson

I'd use:
=if(count(a1,b1)=2,a1+b1,"")


Hi all

I have what seemed to me to be a simple task: If both A1 and
B1 have nothing in them, show nothing, but if either cell has something in
it, do the math...A1+B1. So I wrote: if(A1+B1="","",A1+B1). Unfortunately,
it'll do the math, but it shows a zero for the rows that have no input. Can
someone help?? And explain why??

Thanks very much
Click to expand...
 
D

David Biddulph

Well, you'd already demonstrated that A1+B1 was doing the arithmetic and
being calculated as zero, so when you compared it with the empty string ""
it failed the test. [You can check the result of the comparison and see
that =(0="") returns FALSE.]
If you wanted to use the string comparison, you could have used as the input
the result of a string concatenation instead of an arithmetic addition, and
hence you could have used =IF(A1&B1="","",A1+B1)
That, however, still wouldn't have worked if one or both of your input cells
had not been empty but, for example, contained a space " ", so the COUNT
recommendation is a better bet.
 
R

Ross

Well, you're right. It certainly did do the trick. And thanks for
explaining it. There's no way I would get as good an explaination from the
Help menu!
--
smither fan


David Biddulph said:
Well, you'd already demonstrated that A1+B1 was doing the arithmetic and
being calculated as zero, so when you compared it with the empty string ""
it failed the test. [You can check the result of the comparison and see
that =(0="") returns FALSE.]
If you wanted to use the string comparison, you could have used as the input
the result of a string concatenation instead of an arithmetic addition, and
hence you could have used =IF(A1&B1="","",A1+B1)
That, however, still wouldn't have worked if one or both of your input cells
had not been empty but, for example, contained a space " ", so the COUNT
recommendation is a better bet.
--
David Biddulph

Ross said:
Thanks Dave. Can you please tell me why my original one didn't work?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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