How to Construct a Formula: If Cell is Blank Return Value from Another Cell on Same Row

Just Jean

How is the formula written to do the following?

 

If the cell called "Description" on row 1 is blank, use the contents of the cell called "Keywords" on row 1.

Mike Andreas

=IF(Description1 = "", Keywords1, Description1)

 

Results in the following - row 1 is the scenario you asked about.  Row 2 is the alternative scenario.

 

Just Jean

I think I didn't describe the problem correctly. If the cell Description1 is empty/blank then use the value from Keywords1 in cell Description1.

 

Thanks for your help Mike.

Just Jean

This seems to work:

=IF(ISBLANK(Keywords1),"",Keywords1)

 

Does that look right?

J. Craig Williams

Just Jean,

 

No,

Your formula does not do anything (useful)

 

If your Keywords1 cell is blank, then the result is a blank.

If it is not, the result is whatever is in Keywords1.

 

That is the same as

 

=Keywords1

 

Back to the restate problem - you can not have a formula that may be / will be overwritten manually. You also can not self-reference (that is called a circular reference).

 

If this formula was located in Description1

 

=IF(ISBLANK(Description1),"",Keywords1)

 

you will get an error.

If it was allowed, then as soon as someone typed something into Description1, the formula would be lost. 

Unless you have some means to ensure new rows are alwyas populated with the formula, the new row will just be blank (no formula, no Keywords1)

 

Your best best is to have Description1 be the results of the formula and another column to hold the manual entries.

 

Craig

 

 

 

 

Just Jean

I see. The user should enter something into Description1, but if they fail to do so, then info in Keywords1 should be used to populate the Description1 cell and =Keywords1 will do just that. Thank you.