ISNA in Excel (Formula, Examples) | How to use ISNA Function?

Excel Functions Tutorials

Table of Contents

ISNA Function in Excel
ISNA Formula Excel
How to Use Excel ISNA Function?

What is ISNA Function in Excel?

The “ISNA” function is the very interesting function of Excel. It is used for the purpose of exception handling in Excel and VBA programming. The purpose of ISNA function is to identify whether there is #N/A error exists in any cell, formula or value. #N/A error is more common in the formulas where excel need to find something. Whenever a formula looks for any value and that value doesn’t exist, in that case, the system returns #N/A error, ISNA function returns true or false based on the existence of #N/A error.

So with the help of ISNA function Excel experts can easily deal with #N/A error, they can replace the error with another value.

ISNA Formula Excel

The ISNA formula excel is as follows:

Parameters of ISNA Function in Excel

As it is clear from the syntax shown above the ISNA function has only one parameter which is explained below:

Value: The “Value” parameter is quite flexible, it can be another function or formula, a cell or a value which need to be tested.

The ISNA function returns:

True: If “Value” parameter returns #N/A error or,
False: If “Value” parameter doesn’t return #N/A error.

This will be much clearer from the following examples explained in the next section

How to Use Excel ISNA Function?

In this section, we will understand the uses of the ISNA function and will look at few examples with help of actual data. The ISNA function is really easy to use, and as explained in the previous section, it uses only one mandatory parameter.

Let’s take some examples by providing various values of the parameter and we will check the output of the ISNA function.

Example #1

In the above, we have used a function called FIND function which returns the position of a character in a cell.

So the out of the function FIND will be 7.

Let’s just pass above FIND function as a parameter to

In the parameter, we have used a Find function which returned “7” as output. That’s why ISNA returned FALSE because the output of Value Parameter is not #N/A error.

Example #2

Now let’s just pass #N/A directly as a parameter to ISNA function

In the above case, we directly passed #N/A as a parameter to ISNA function and ISNA returned a TRUE value, which proves that ISNA detects #N/A error present in any cell.

Example #3

Now let’s pass #VALUE! as a parameter to ISNA function

In the above case, we passed #VALUE! as a parameter to ISNA function. #VALUE! is also a data missing error. But ISNA returned a FALSE value because ISNA detects only #N/A error, not any other error.

Example #4

In this example, we will use some other functions as parameters for ISNA function.

Output is True

Explanation of ISNA Function in Excel

In the above example, we have used a data table with information of some Animals and their prices. Then we used a VLOOKUP function inside the ISNA function. So when we enter an Animal name which exists in the data table, then VLOOKUP returns the price of that Animal that means return value of VLOOKUP is not #N/A. If we enter an animal name which is not present in the data table, in that case, the return of VLOOKUP function will be #N/A error.

CASE 1: When an animal exists in the data table

When we entered “Cow” in that case VLOOKUP found the price of the cow in the data table. That means no #N/A error that is why ISNA returned FALSE.

Case 2: When the animal is not present in the data table

When we entered “Horse” in that case VLOOKUP didn’t found the price of a horse in the data table. That means #N/A error that is why ISNA returned TRUE.

CASE 3: When an animal exists in the data table

When we entered “Lion” in that case VLOOKUP found the price of the lion in the data table. That means no #N/A error that is why ISNA returned FALSE.

Things to Remember about the ISNA Function in Excel:

It can be used as a worksheet function.
It returns a Boolean value (TRUE or FALSE).

You can download this ISNA Function Excel template here – ISNA Function Excel Template

ISNA Function in Excel