The ISNA function is an Information Function. It is is used to return information about the status of a cell, or specifically another functions results. The most common use I have for this function is to validate the VLOOKUP function. If the VLOOKUP function is looking for a value that can not be found in the lookup range, then it will return #N/A as the result. Thus it is good to wrap that function in an IF Statement using the ISNA function to replace the #N/A results with something else – e.g. a text string such as “error” or maybe a zero.
=IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(A1,$B:$B,1,FALSE))=TRUE,"error",VLOOKUP(A1,$B:$B,1,FALSE))
Remember the ISNA function returns a TRUE or FALSE. These equate to a 1 or 0 so can be used in formulas such as array formulas as well.
Comments
Wow, you do learn something
Wow, you do learn something new everyday. ISNA is new to me so thanks for pointing it out. I can already see where it can be used in a few of my spreadsheets, thanks so much for this!




Ha ha pretty cool function
Ha ha pretty cool function man, thanks for sharing will try this.
Thanks for sharing this,
Thanks for sharing this, sometime I forget the excel basics, thanks for the reminder...


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