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Finding missing data

ISBLANK() accepts a cell address and returns TRUE if that cell is empty. This provides a useful way of checking for missing data.

Logical conditions like ISBLANK() are useful for filtering datasets: you can keep only the rows where some condition is TRUE. Data filtering can be done using FILTER(), which takes two arguments. The first argument is the range of the data that you want to filter, and the second argument is the range containing the logical values to filter on.

For example, if the data (not including the header row) is in A2:E10, and the final column E contains the logical values to filter on, you would type =FILTER(A2:E10, E2:E10).

This exercise is part of the course

Intermediate Google Sheets

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Exercise instructions

Some athletes have gone missing! An extra column, "Athlete Is Blank?" has been added to the dataset.

  • Use the ISBLANK() function in column H to determine which values in the dataset have missing athletes.
  • In cell A23, call FILTER() to filter the dataset to show only the rows with missing athletes.
    • Pass the range of all the data from A2 to H20 as the first argument.
    • The 2nd argument should be the logical values contained in H2 to H20.

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