Zero fields in IRR

[G.De Ceulaer]

Hi,
Is there somebody who can help me with IRR ?

In the periods that are zero, I get a different result when I put a "0"
instead of leaving the field empty. Why ?

Thanks in advance
Gilbert

 

[Harlan Grove]

In the periods that are zero, I get a different result when I put a "0"
instead of leaving the field empty. Why ?

For example, if A1 contained -1, A2 were blank and A3 contained 2, =IRR(A1:A3)
returns 100%. IRR ignores blank cells, meaning it doesn't consider them zeros.
Why so? All I can think of is either compatibility with MultiPlan (since this is
inconsistent with 123 functionality) or a nice big fubar that Microsoft isn't
going to change for reasons of backward compatibility.

There are a lot of questionable design decisions in Excel that we must all just
live with. This is one of them.