Slightly shaded empty cells - <empty> vs ''

1

Hello,

In the excel file I’m importing to EasyMorph, some of the empty cells are slightly shaded and others are white. When I use the filter in EasyMorph, I see that the ones that are slightly shaded correspond to <“empty”> while those that are white correspond to ‘’ (blank), here is a screenshot:

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In column UNITOFMEASID, I don’t understand why the cell below the first instance of EU570459 is slightly shaded, while the cell above EU570079 is white. Why is one <“empty”> and the other ‘’ (blank), and what do these values mean?

When I open imported excel file in actual Excel and go to these cells, they are all empty and there is no apparent difference between them.

I also find it strange that in column UNITOFMEASID, most empty cells stay white, while in column VALUEID for example, empty cells stay slightly shaded.

I detected this because when a value is <“empty”>, a formula such as if([UNITOFMEASID]=’’,“Unit”, “No Unit”) does not work, as ’ ’ is not the same thing as <“empty”>.

I attach the origin excel file: SOURCE2.xlsx (17.8 KB)

Thanks very much,

Roberto

2

Hello Roberto,

White empty cells are text cell with empty strings i.e. with string of zero length.

Shaded cells are cells. They doesn’t have a value at all. Like NULLs in a database.

Excel doesn’t store any value in the cells which haven’t been filled. So we import such cells as . And if a value was removed from a cell in Excel, it stores such cell as an empty text. And we imprt such cells as an empty text.

You can convert cell to empty text an vice versa with the “Modify column” action and a corresponding expression. Also you can try to use actions like “Convert data type” and “Cleanup”.