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Using IF formula to check empty cells

  • June 4, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 173 views
A

Hi everyone,
I’m looking for a formula to check if any cells on a selection of 5 are empty. Hard to explain globally, but theorically the formula would look like this: IF (Cell 1) is empty OR (Cell 2) is empty OR (Cell 3) is empty… THEN display :white_check_mark:
How can I achieve this on Airtable?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Best answer by kuovonne

Welcome to the Airtable community!

You want to compare values with BLANK(), and use an OR() function.

IF(
  OR(
    Field1 = BLANK(),
    Field2 = BLANK(),
    Field3 = BLANK(),
    Field4 = BLANK(),
    Field5 = BLANK()
  ),
  "✅" 
)

If this answers your question, please mark this post as the solution. Otherwise, could you please give a bit more details and a screen capture?

2 replies

kuovonne
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  • kuovonne
  • Brainy
  • Answer
  • June 4, 2020

Welcome to the Airtable community!

You want to compare values with BLANK(), and use an OR() function.

IF(
  OR(
    Field1 = BLANK(),
    Field2 = BLANK(),
    Field3 = BLANK(),
    Field4 = BLANK(),
    Field5 = BLANK()
  ),
  "✅" 
)

If this answers your question, please mark this post as the solution. Otherwise, could you please give a bit more details and a screen capture?

A
Justin_Barrett
Forum|alt.badge.img+21

An alternate approach is to use the shortcut method for checking whether or not a field has anything in it, by only including the field name. For example:

IF(Field1, ...

is equivalent to

IF(Field1 != BLANK(), ...

To invert the comparison, and see if it is blank, wrap the field name in NOT():

IF(NOT(Field1), ...

is equivalent to

IF(Field1 = BLANK(), ...

Which means the formula written above could also be written like this:

IF(
  OR(
    NOT(Field1),
    NOT(Field2),
    NOT(Field3),
    NOT(Field4),
    NOT(Field5)
  ),
  "✅" 
)

Yet another way is to invert the entire thing. Because you’re checking for any one of those fields to be blank, this will also work:

IF(NOT(AND(Field1, Field2, Field3, Field4, Field5)), "✅")

This only downside to this field-name-only shortcut is when it’s a numeric field. Airtable will read a 0 in a numeric field as false. In that case you would have to compare against BLANK() to correctly distinguish between an empty field and one that contains a 0.

L
A
kuovonne
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