To check whether a cell is empty, use =IF(ISBLANK(A1),"Blank","Non-Blank"). ISBLANK returns TRUE only for a genuinely empty cell, and IF turns that into your own message.
The alternative is =IF(A1="","Blank","Non-Blank"), which looks identical but behaves differently in one important case: a cell holding a formula that returns “” looks empty and is treated as blank by A1=””, while ISBLANK reports it as not blank, because the cell does contain something.
Use A1=”” when you want “looks empty” and ISBLANK when you want “truly empty”. Neither catches a cell holding only a space — for that, test =IF(TRIM(A1)="","Blank","Non-Blank").
To leave the result cell empty rather than writing “Blank”, use =IF(A1="","",A1), and to check several cells at once, =IF(COUNTBLANK(A1:C1)>0,"Missing","Complete") flags any row with a gap.
In Excel, if you want to check if a cell is blank or not, you can use a combination formula of IF and ISBLANK. These two formulas work in a way where ISBLANK checks for the cell value and then IF returns a meaningful full message (specified by you) in return.
In the following example, you have a list of numbers where you have a few cells blank.
Formula to Check IF a Cell is Blank or Not (Empty)
- First, in cell B1, enter IF in the cell.
- Now, in the first argument, enter the ISBLANK and refer to cell A1 and enter the closing parentheses.
- Next, in the second argument, use the “Blank” value.
- After that, in the third argument, use “Non-Blank”.
- In the end, close the function, hit enter, and drag the formula up to the last value that you have in the list.
As you can see, we have the value “Blank” for the cell where the cell is empty in column A.
=IF(ISBLANK(A1),"Blank","Non-Blank")Now let’s understand this formula. In the first part where we have the ISBLANK which checks if the cells are blank or not.
And, after that, if the value returned by the ISBLANK is TRUE, IF will return “Blank”, and if the value returned by the ISBLANK is FALSE IF will return “Non_Blank”.
Alternate Formula
You can also use an alternate formula where you just need to use the IF function.
Now in the function, you just need to specify the cell where you want to test the condition and then use an equal operator with the blank value to create a condition to test. And you just need to specify two values that you want to get the condition TRUE or FALSE.
Written by
Puneet Gogia
Microsoft MVP — Excel · Founder, Excel Champs
Twelve years of teaching Excel, and a decade before that using it as a data analyst. Every tutorial here is written from a file I actually built.