crosswords

[paulz]

Am trying to show daughter how she could use an excel spreadsheet to fill out a Codebreaker type crossword. ie you are given a numbered grid usually a short word, and for example all the no 1's are 'S' and so on. Got it all worked out, but until a letter is put on the master grid [to fill all the same nos on the Xword] as no value is returned then zeros are shown. Is there a formula that you could use that if it's a letter its displayed on the x-word, but no letter no display [or white font?] something like : square A1 on X-word has this formula =T2('IF T2=0, THEN A1 IS BLANK,') would that work?

[Hippy]

There are two options that you could use. If the answer to your formulas are zero NUMBERS and you want to suppress display of ALL zero numbers then go to Tools|Options and remove the tick from the box marked "Zero values".

If, however, you want to suppress zero (or any other value you choose) result from a formula then do this. Assuming the calculation is to take the contents of A7 and multiply it by the contents of A8 (I don't know what your formula is so you will have to substitute yours for my example) the most simple formula would be =A7*A8 To suppress the zero result use the IF function following the convention IF([condition],[do this if true],[do this if false]). So, in my example =IF(A7*A8=0,"",A7*A8) will return the result of multiplying A7 and A8 if the answer to that sum in non-zero, if it is zero then the formula returns a null string and nothing is seen.

Beware, Excel does not show the text string for the number zero (or any other number) differently from the actual number, although the values in the cell are quite different.

[paulz]

Hippy - Thanks, thought there must be a way around it. Quite like excel, shame the help facility is so cr@p! Cheers matey & thanks again.