ISBLANK Function in Excel

ISBLANK is a logical function in excel which is also a type of referencing worksheet function which is used to refer to a cell and identify whether it has blank values in it or not, this function takes a single argument which is the cell reference and returns TRUE as output if the cell is blank and FALSE as output if cell is not blank.

ISBLANK Formula in Excel

The ISBLANK Formula in Excel is:

Value is the cell reference passed as an argument that we want to check

How to Use the ISBLANK Function in Excel?

ISBLANK function in Excel is very simple and easy to use. Let understand the working of ISBLANK function in Excel by some examples.

You can download this ISBLANK Function Excel Template here – ISBLANK Function Excel Template

Example #1

Cell A6 is empty and doesn’t have any value, so it returned a TRUE value.

Example #2

We have a list of names provided with their first and last names however there are some names where the last name is not provided. We need to find out using excel formula the names that are incomplete or without the last name.

We can use this function to check if the last name is provided or not. If the last name is blank the ISBLANK function will return a TRUE value using this value and IF function we will check whether both the names have been provided or not.

The ISBLANK formula that we will be using is

=IF(ISBLANK(B2),”InComplete Name”,”Complete Name”)

It returns value using ISBLANK when value is true then the last name is not provided else the last name is provided.

Applying ISBLANK formula to rest of the cells we have,

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Output:

Example #3

Suppose we have a dataset given in a range as shown below:

We want to highlight the blank cells, for example, we need to highlights cells B5, C4 and other similar blank cells in the data range.

To highlight the cells we will use the conditional formatting and ISBLANK function.

We will select the range from B2:H11 and then under Home tab, we will select the conditional formatting in excel (Home -> Styles -> Conditional Formatting)

Then we will select the New Rule and a window will pop up New Formatting Rule. We will use a formula to determine the cells to format. The ISBLANK formula that we will be using is

=ISBLANK(B2:H11)

We will then select the format and will choose the highlighting color and will press OK.

Output:

Example #4

Differentiate between an empty cell and cell containing an empty string.

We have some values in column A. Range A5 contains an empty string and A4 is an empty cell. In excel both the cells A4 and A5 seem to be an empty cell but we need to identify whether it is an empty cell or not.

For that, we will use the ISBLANK function and IF function to check because for empty string the ISBLANK function returns a FALSE value it returns TRUE only when a cell is completely empty or null.

The ISBLANK formula that we will use is

=IF(ISBLANK(A2),”Is Empty”,”Not Empty”)

Applying the ISBLANK formula to other cells we have,

For cell A4, It returned TRUE value hence it is an empty cell and other cells have some hence ISBLANK in excel returns FALSE value for them.

Output:

If a cell have an empty string (“”), ISBLANK function in excel will return FALSE, as they are not blank.

Example #5

Suppose we have a list of items with their SKU codes and the items for which the SKU codes have not been assigned are left blank. Column A contains the list of item and column B contains the SKU code including the items for which the SKU codes have not been assigned. In column D, we have some list of items not arranged in order and we need to find the SKU code or else if SKU code not assigned then we must write a formula that may return “Assign SKU Code”.