How do I stop graphs reading zero in Excel from cells with ""?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Hi.

I am making a model in Excel which is takes data updates from an outside
source and then processes the information to develop charts on the data.
There are a lot of charts so I have developed the model to process the data
automatically as the data comes (down the sheet). This processing means that
there are formulas in place, waiting for the data to come in. I use a
=if(a1="","",<operation>) notation to do it for me. If there is data then
the if statement is false and the data can be processed; if the data hasn't
arrived yet then instead of getting an error message you get a "".

This works fine and I have set up the graphs so that there is a little
leeway for additional data to come in and for the information to fit in the
array read by the chart. However, my problem is that when the data hasn't
arrived yet and Excel encounters "" in a cell (i.e., the if statement is
true), which to me means <blank> or <empty>, it reads it as a zero.
Therefore my nice charts have a large vertical line back down to zero at the
end of every data series.

One option is to redo the arrays of the chart whenever I use the model but
there are probably 200 charts so this is uneconomic! What I am looking for
is a way to deal with the formulas so the Excel reads my "" as <empty> rather
than a zero. Has anyone come across this problem before? Does anyone know
how I might solve this problem?

Thanks for your help.

Tom
 
To not have it plotted, change your formula from "" to NA()

To avoid the #NA! from being seen, use conditional formatting on such cells
to if the formula is = NA() then format the font color to be the same as the
background color. Example:

If it's cell C57 that has the formula in it to return NA() rather than the
first box of Condition 1 would be "Formula Is", and the second box would be
"=ISNA(C57)". Of course, you don't include the double quotes within the
dialog box.


Formula in C57 would be:

=if(a1="",NA(),<operation>)


Also, when you have the chart selected, within Tools>Options>Chart, make
sure you have it set to either NOT plot empty cells or to Interpolate empty
cells.
 
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