Excel conditional formatting - Highlight numbers greater than 5 but ignore any formula

Question

I am having a strange problem, I have a column with this formula in each row respectively:

=IF(C6="";"";D6-LEN(B6))

It works great, if the cell next to it is empty, make it an empty cell, if not, show the calculated length. However, when I try to use conditional formatting to make it red when the length is greater than 5, it highlights the cells that are 'blank'(have a formula in but are displaying blank). Any ideas as to why this is happening would be greatly appreciated.

PS. I am currently using Open Office 4.0.1 and it seems to work fine, but when I send the document to a client(Excel 2010) it highlights the empty cells. I have tried clearing the conditional formatting and using Excels built in conditional for-matter and it does the exact same thing.

Thanks in advance, James.

Answer 1

Use this formula for conditional formatting ( Tested in MS-OFFICE and not Open Office )

=AND(E1<>"",E1>5)

Note: Replace , with ; in your formula

Screenshot

EDIT

TRIED AND TESTED IN Open Office 4.1.3.2

Answer 2

Apparently Excel regards the empty string from a formula as having a value larger than ANY number. Just try it with numbers like 100000000 or -100000000 or 0...

This in contrast to an empty cell (or a cell without any entry, not even =""). A really empty cell has value = 0 for this comparison (again I suggest you play around with it)

Also Excel has no other way to create an empty string as a result from a formula, so in your conditional formatting you will have to check for the empty string returned from the formula. Just as Siddharth suggests change your conditional formatting formula into:

=AND(E1<>"";E1>5)

Yes this is strange behavior by Excel. And a shame an empty string and an empty cell arent the same thing for this (and many other) purpose

Answer 3

I've just run into a similar problem and came up with the following workaround =AND(ISNUMBER(E1), E1>5) . Formulae have to be localised into the interface language of Excel. Eg in German that becomes =UND(ISTZAHL(E1); E1>5)