Return Blank Cell Instead of Zero in Excel Formulas

As we work with Excel, we may want to return blank cells instead of zeroes in formulas. For example, we could return blank cells instead of zeroes to make the data more visually appealing and easier to read, especially when many cells have zeroes.

This tutorial shows a technique for returning blank cells instead of zeroes in formulas.

Use the IF Function to Return Blank Cells Instead of Zeroes in Formulas in Excel

The IF function checks whether a condition is met and returns one value if TRUE and another value if FALSE. An empty string is a text string with no characters or space characters.

We can use a formula that uses the IF function to return an empty string instead of a zero if the condition equals zero. However, note that an empty string in a cell only gives the appearance of a blank cell, but the cell is not blank because it contains the invisible empty string.

Let’s consider the following dataset showing the number of goals scored by various football clubs in 2019 and 2020.

We want to use a formula with the IF function to sum the goals for each team in column D and return empty strings instead of a sum of zero goals.

We use the following steps:

1. Select cell D2 and enter the below formula:

2. Drag or double-click the Fill Handle to copy the formula down the column.

The cells with a sum of zero goals are blank or empty.

Explanation of the formula

The formula checks if the sum of cells B2 and C2 equals zero. If it is, it returns a blank cell (“”). Otherwise, it returns the sum of cells B2 and C2.

Conclusion

This tutorial described how we work with Excel; we may want to return blank cells instead of zeroes in formulas. For instance, we could return blank cells instead of zeroes to make the data easier to read and visually appealing, especially when many cells contain zeroes.

This tutorial showed how to use the IF function to return blank cells instead of zeroes in formulas in Excel.