in Excel

Get rid of #N/As with IFERROR


I am starting a series of articles on formulas in Excel and Google Sheets. I am putting these 2 together because most of the formulas work on both platforms pretty much the same way. I will skip the basics, like SUM or AVERAGE and will try to write about the formulas that do not get invited to the party so often, the first one: IFERROR.

IFERROR

The problem

If you heard about VLOOKUP, you probably know what happens when it finds no value after searching, you get this message.

IFERROR

For the most part, this is not a problem. However, if you want to build more complex models, you may not like the #N/As scattered all around your spreadsheets. This is where IFERROR is handy.

The syntax

Each formula has its own syntax, in our case it is the following:



IFERROR(What we test, What we display in exchange)

If we want to replace the #N/A with a blank space, we write the following formula:

IFERROR(VLOOKUP(…),” “)

Ant the result

IFERROR Much better 🙂 .

Download an example

IFERROR Example


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