Page 442 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

424 Much Ado about Text
Excel offers ten built-in IS information functions:
✦ ISBLANK(value) to evaluate whether the value or cell reference is empty
✦ ISERR(value) to evaluate whether the value or cell reference contains an Error value (except for #N/A)
✦ ISERROR(value) to evaluate whether the value or cell reference contains an Error value (including #N/A)
✦ ISLOGICAL(value) to evaluate whether the value or cell reference con- tains the logical TRUE or FALSE value
✦ ISNA(value) to evaluate whether the value or cell reference contains the special #N/A Error value
✦ ISNONTEXT(value) to evaluate whether the value or cell reference con- tains any type of entry other than text
✦ ISNUMBER(value) to evaluate whether the value or cell reference con- tains a number
✦ ISODD(number) to evaluate whether the value in the referenced cell is odd (TRUE) or even (FALSE)
✦ ISREF(value) to evaluate whether the value or cell reference is itself a cell reference
✦ ISTEXT(value) to evaluate whether the value or cell reference contains a text entry
In addition to these ten IS functions, Excel adds two more, ISEVEN and ISODD, when you activate the Analysis ToolPak add-in. The ISEVEN function evaluates whether the number or reference to a cell containing a number
is even, whereas the ISODD function evaluates whether it is odd. (For an example of how to use the ISERROR function, refer to the section on error trapping in Book III, Chapter 2.)
Much Ado about Text
Normally, when you think of doing calculations in a spreadsheet, you think of performing operations on its numeric entries. You can, however, use the text functions as well as the concatenation operator (&) to perform opera- tions on its text entries as well (referred to collectively as string operations).