Have Excel formulas that return 0, make the result blank

Question

A recurring Excel problem I have is formulas such as INDEX(array,row,column) that return 0 when there\'s no result, rather than returning blank.

What is

Answer 1

Just append an empty string to the end. It forces Excel to see it for what it is.

For example:

=IFERROR(1/1/INDEX(A,B,C) & "","")

Answer 2

None of the above worked for me today, so I tried putting the 0 in quotes, as shown in the example below.

Example: =IF(INDEX(a,b,c)="0","", INDEX(a,b,c))

Answer 3

I figured it out, by concatenating an EMPTY string.

INDEX(tt_Attributes,MATCH([RowID],tt_Attributes[RowID],0),COLUMN(tt_Attributes[Long Description]) ) & ""

Answer 4

I am not sure it works with all type of data but the only solution I found for the moment is to test if index returns blank:

=IF(ISBLANK(INDEX(a,b,c)),"",INDEX(a,b,c))

The formula

=IF(INDEX(a,b,c),INDEX(a,b,c),"")

does not work with text

Answer 5

If you’re willing to cause all zeroes in the worksheet to disappear, go into “Excel Options”, “Advanced” page, “Display options for this worksheet” section, and clear the “Show a zero in cells that have a zero value” checkbox.  (This is the navigation for Excel 2007; YMMV.)

Regarding your answer (2), you can save a couple of keystrokes by typing 0;-0; –– as far as I can tell, that’s equivalent to 0;-0;;@.  Conversely, if you want to be a little more general, you can use the format General;-General;.  No, that doesn’t automagically handle dates, but, as Barry points out, if you’re expecting a date value, you can use a format like d-mmm-yyyy;;.

Answer 6

There is a very simple answer to this messy problem--the SUBSTITUTE function. In your example above:

=IF((1/1/INDEX(A,B,C))<>"",(1/1/INDEX(A,B,C)),"")

Can be rewritten as follows:

=SUBSTITUTE((1/1/INDEX(A,B,C), " ", "")