Not IS Blank or IS Text formula to mark a symbol

hsway

Use Case:

I would like a cell to change symbols (red for example) based on whether or not a given row has text (any text).

I've tried

=IF(ISTEXT([What should we stop doing?]@row, "Red")))

Returns UNPARSEABLE

I've also tried

=IF(NOT(ISBLANK([What should we stop doing?]@row, "Red")))

Returns INCORRECT ARGUMENT.

Surely there is something I am doing wrong?

Genevieve P.

Hi @hsway

Are you looking only for text, or if there is any content at all in the cell? If you're just looking for any content, I would do the following:

=IF([What should we stop doing?]@row <> "", "Red")

<> "" says not blank

If you're specifically looking for a cell that is only text values (versus numerical), then you can use the ISTEXT, like so:

=IF(ISTEXT([What should we stop doing?]@row), "Red")

Notice that there is a closing parentheses after the @row ) before the comma and "Red". This is why you were getting an error.

Keep in mind this will only ever return a Red ball or Blank cell. Do you have other statements you want to return? For example, should it ever be Green or Yellow?

Cheers,

Genevieve

hsway

Hey Genevieve,

Your first suggestion worked out. I did =IF([What should we stop doing?]@row <> "", "Red", ""). Thanks

Genevieve P.

Wonderful! I'm glad I could help.