Return empty cell from formula in Excel

Excel does not have any way to do this.

The result of a formula in a cell in Excel must be a number, text, logical (boolean) or error. There is no formula cell value type of "empty" or "blank".

One practice that I have seen followed is to use NA() and ISNA(), but that may or may not really solve your issue since there is a big differrence in the way NA() is treated by other functions (SUM(NA()) is #N/A while SUM(A1) is 0 if A1 is empty).

You're going to have to use VBA, then. You'll iterate over the cells in your range, test the condition, and delete the contents if they match.

Something like:

For Each cell in SomeRange
  If (cell.value = SomeTest) Then cell.ClearContents
Next

This is how I did it for the dataset I was using. It seems convoluted and stupid, but it was the only alternative to learning how to use the VB solution mentioned above.

1. I did a "copy" of all the data, and pasted the data as "values".
2. Then I highlighted the pasted data and did a "replace" (Ctrl-H) the empty cells with some letter, I chose q since it wasn't anywhere on my data sheet.
3. Finally, I did another "replace", and replaced q with nothing.

This three step process turned all of the "empty" cells into "blank" cells". I tried merging steps 2 & 3 by simply replacing the blank cell with a blank cell, but that didn't work--I had to replace the blank cell with some kind of actual text, then replace that text with a blank cell.

So many answers that return a value that LOOKS empty but is not actually an empty as cell as requested...

As requested, if you actually want a formula that returns an empty cell. It IS possible through VBA. So, here is the code to do just exactly that. Start by writing a formula to return the #N/A error wherever you want the cells to be empty. Then my solution automatically clears all the cells which contain that #N/A error. Of course you can modify the code to automatically delete the contents of cells based on anything you like.

Open the "visual basic viewer" (Alt + F11) Find the workbook of interest in the project explorer and double click it (or right click and select view code). This will open the "view code" window. Select "Workbook" in the (General) dropdown menu and "SheetCalculate" in the (Declarations) dropdown menu.

Paste the following code (based on the answer by J.T. Grimes) inside the Workbook_SheetCalculate function

    For Each cell In Sh.UsedRange.Cells
        If IsError(cell.Value) Then
            If (cell.Value = CVErr(xlErrNA)) Then cell.ClearContents
        End If
    Next

Save your file as a macro enabled workbook

NB: This process is like a scalpel. It will remove the entire contents of any cells that evaluate to the #N/A error so be aware. They will go and you cant get them back without reentering the formula they used to contain.

NB2: Obviously you need to enable macros when you open the file else it won't work and #N/A errors will remain undeleted

What I used was a small hack. I used T(1), which returned an empty cell. T is a function in excel that returns its argument if its a string and an empty cell otherwise. So, what you can do is:

=IF(condition,T(1),value)

This answer does not fully deal with the OP, but there are have been several times I have had a similar problem and searched for the answer.

If you can recreate the formula or the data if needed (and from your description it looks as if you can), then when you are ready to run the portion that requires the blank cells to be actually empty, then you can select the region and run the following vba macro.

Sub clearBlanks()
    Dim r As Range
    For Each r In Selection.Cells
        If Len(r.Text) = 0 Then
            r.Clear
        End If
    Next r
End Sub

this will wipe out off of the contents of any cell which is currently showing "" or has only a formula

I was stripping out single quotes so a telephone number column such as +1-800-123-4567 didn't result in a computation and yielding a negative number. I attempted a hack to remove them on empty cells, bar the quote, then hit this issue too (column F). It's far easier to just call text on the source cell and voila!:

=IF(F2="'","",TEXT(F2,""))

This can be done in Excel, without using the new chart feature of setting #N/A to be a gap. But it’s fiddly. Let’s say that you want to make line on an XY chart. Then:
Row 1: point 1
Row 2: point 2
Row 3: hard empty
Row 4: point 2
Row 5: point 3
Row 6: hard empty
Row 7: point 3
Row 8: point 4
Row 9: hard empty
etc

The result is a lot of separate lines. The formula for the points can control whether omitted by a #N/A. Typically the formulae for the points INDEX() into another range.