Formula to Check if a Cell Contains #N/A

Sometimes you will have a formula in a series of cells and in some of those cells there is an error and the cell displays #N/A. #N/A indicates "Not Applicable" or "Not Available". #N/A can come in for a variety of reasons. In my case, I encountered it while using the VLOOKUP formula where the value could not be referenced.

Now in another cell I wanted to check if this cell had a proper value before proceeding with further operation. Suppose you have #N/A coming in from a formula in Cell C1, and you want to check if it has #N/A in another cell D1, then in cell D1, you can use the following formula:

=ISNA(C1)

or

\=ISERROR(C1)

Both these formulas return a TRUE or FALSE. WHile ISNA is specifically to catch #N/A error, ISERROR can be used to catch all kinds of errors such as #N/A, #VALUE!, #REF!, #DIV/0!, #NUM!, #NAME?, or #NULL!

I hope this helps!

Membership
Learn the skills required to excel in data science and data analytics covering R, Python, machine learning, and AI.
I WANT TO JOIN
JOIN 30,000 DATA PROFESSIONALS

Free Guides - Getting Started with R and Python

Enter your name and email address below and we will email you the guides for R programming and Python.

Saylient AI Logo

Take the Next Step in Your Data Career

Join our membership for lifetime unlimited access to all our data analytics and data science learning content and resources.