Issues with "" not actually being interpreted as blank.

**most_excellent** · 03-14-2017, 05:34 AM

I have a column (M) that has a formula like this:

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The A column is for IDs, as is this column M on the end. Basically, I need to have a hidden duplicate ID column because column K is something I need to do VLOOKUPs on (as is column A).

So, I have that formula in column M dragged down all the way to row 1000. The issue is that "" isn't ACTUALLY blank, so if I try to add a new record using a form, it ends up in row 1001, because "" isn't actually blank.

I googled this for quite a while and apparent there is no function like LEAVECELLBLANK(), so I really have no idea how to deal with this issue.

Thank you for reading.

**TMS** · 03-14-2017, 05:45 AM

If you are creating a Helper column in column M with the formula =IF(ISBLANK(A2), "", A2) simply so that you can use VLOOKUP on column K and return the ID (from column M, why not ditch the Helper column and use INDEX/MATCH instead.

Formula:

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is equivalent to

Formula:

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This means that you don't need extensive "blank" rows/cells with just a helper column which will bloat the worksheet. You can use the actual data without needing helper columns.

**popipipo** · 03-14-2017, 06:14 AM

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Will this work?

**TMS** · 03-14-2017, 06:36 AM

Same difference. The cell has a formula in it so it's not blank in terms of using Ctrl-Up or Ctrl-Down. Might be blank visually.

Issues with "" not actually being interpreted as blank.

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