Have Excel formulas that return 0, make the result blank

Question

A recurring Excel problem I have is formulas such as INDEX(array,row,column) that return 0 when there\'s no result, rather than returning blank.

What is

Answer 1

If you’re willing to cause all zeroes in the worksheet to disappear, go into “Excel Options”, “Advanced” page, “Display options for this worksheet” section, and clear the “Show a zero in cells that have a zero value” checkbox.  (This is the navigation for Excel 2007; YMMV.)

Regarding your answer (2), you can save a couple of keystrokes by typing 0;-0; –– as far as I can tell, that’s equivalent to 0;-0;;@.  Conversely, if you want to be a little more general, you can use the format General;-General;.  No, that doesn’t automagically handle dates, but, as Barry points out, if you’re expecting a date value, you can use a format like d-mmm-yyyy;;.