I'm trying to write a formula to return a blank cell if the condition is met, and to show the numerical difference if not. Here is what I've written:=IF((F35-F29)=0, " ", (F35-F29)). It is returning 0.00, not a blank cell. Where is my error?

Question

I'm trying to write a formula to return a blank cell if the condition is met, and to show the numerical difference if not.  Here is what I've written:=IF((F35-F29)=0, " ", (F35-F29)). When the condition is met (i.e., the difference=0) it is returning 0.00, not a blank cell.  Where is my error?

Answer 1

Without knowing what is in F35 and F29, I can only guess.  Your formula matches what you said but if F35 and/or F29 are the results of formulas and are decimal numbers (not integers), it is very possible that they are not exactly the same number even though you think they should be.  IEEE Floating Point math often has very very small errors so the answer is not exactly what you would get with a pencil and paper. Try one or both of these things:
Format the IF cell as scientific. is that 0.0 exactly zero? I suspect it will be some very tiny number.
Type the exact same number into F35 and F29 and see if your IF formula works as you expect.
You might need to use ROUND on F35, F29 and/or in your IF formula to get rid of the tiny math errors.
If you search the forum for floating point math or IEEE 754 you should find more than a few posts about Numbers and floating point math. Or you can read about IEEE 754 on Wikipedia.  It trips up a lot of people.
Here is a common example.  B2 and C2 are from the formulas shown in B1 and C1. They should both be exactly zero, if done with paper and pencil.  Neither is exactly zero (though I have them formatted with 2 decimals so they appear to be 0.00), they are different from each other, and subtracting one from the other is also not exactly zero.