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ISBLANK / ISNUMBER / ISTEXT / ISERROR

Logic & error handling

Ask what kind of thing is in a cell — empty, a number, text, or an error.

Difficulty

Amateur
Excel file

1What is it?

The IS-family each answer a yes/no question about a cell and return TRUE or FALSE: ISBLANK (is it empty?), ISNUMBER (does it hold a number?), ISTEXT (does it hold text?), ISERROR (did it error?). They shine inside an IF, where you want to act on the *type* of a value rather than the value itself — treat a blank as zero, catch a stray text entry in a numbers column, or handle an error before it spreads.

2What it looks like

ISNUMBER(value)
value
The cell or expression to test.

3When you use it

  • Treat empty as zero: =IF(ISBLANK(B2), 0, B2).
  • Flag a value pasted as text: =IF(ISNUMBER(B2), "OK", "Fix — it's text").
  • Check for a substring: =IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH("inv", A2)), "Invoice", "Other").

4See it in action

Change the inputs — the formula and result update live. Prefer the real thing? Download the Excel file and open it in Excel.

B2 holds a number, B3 holds text, B4 is blank. Pick a cell and a function to see the TRUE/FALSE answer.

C2
fx
=ISNUMBER(B2)TRUE
ABC
1CellContentsResult
2B21240TRUE
3B3Pending
4B4

The lime cell holds the formula — click it (or any cell) to see its contents in the bar above, just like Excel. Edit the blue cells to watch it recompute.

5Common errors

ISBLANK says FALSEThe cell holds a formula that returns "" — it looks empty but isn't.

Fix: Test with =B2="" instead, which catches both truly-blank and empty-string cells.

ISERROR hides real bugsYou wrap everything in ISERROR and swallow genuine mistakes.

Fix: Prefer IFERROR/IFNA on just the part that can legitimately error, and only for the specific error.

Wrong IS for the jobISTEXT on a number-stored-as-text vs a real number.

Fix: A number pasted as text is ISTEXT=TRUE, ISNUMBER=FALSE — that's the tell you need to convert it.

6Better functions & alternatives

  • IFERROR — The clean way to catch and replace errors without IF(ISERROR(…)).
  • IFNA — Catch only #N/A while letting real errors surface.
  • IF — The IS-functions are almost always the test inside an IF.

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