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Going missing

Some calculations involving blank values may give different results to what you might expect. For example, when you pass a blank value into the AND() function, it is treated as TRUE. This is often unhelpful. To make blanks behave in a sensible way in calculations, you must first convert them to be "not available" using NA(). This function takes no inputs, and returns a missing value. To convert a blank value to a missing value, use this pattern.

=IF(ISBLANK(cell), NA(), cell)

This exercise is part of the course

Intermediate Google Sheets

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Exercise instructions

  • In column H, use AND() to find women who have kids and get benefits.
  • In column I, convert the blanks in column G to missing values.
  • In column J, again find women who have kids and get benefits, this time using column I rather than G.

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