Display the value of the cell next to the first blank cell in a column

Question

This is my first post, so I hope it makes sense.

I'm trying to pay off a credit card in 35 payments and I want to see how much it'll cost me in XX number of payments. In my spreadsheet, I have 3 columns. The first is the date I'll pay it, the second is the payment amount, and the third is the number of payments left. What I'm looking for is a way to search a column (in this case it's column B) for the first blank cell, then display the value of the cell to the right (in column C) and subtract 1 (since that payment has been completed.)

This will be placed in cell F12.

I have attached a screenshot, as well as placed some bogus data in there for reference.

Answer 1

There's a lot of ways to do this since the values are numeric. As was said in the comments, you could sort of shortcut it by using the fact that it's an incremental value less with something like: c2-count(B:B) or =MINIFS(C:C,B:B,">0")+1

However, to address it in the same way you describe more functionally (ie if you were trying to get the text) you'd do something like this with the INDEX function.

• Use index to reference all of column C .
• Count the number of filled cells in Column B with Counta
• Use that count as the second parameter but add 1 for the next row.
• Add another 1 as the third parameter to indicate it isn't an array (ie first column).=.

So this should work... =INDEX(C:C,COUNTA(B:B)+1,1)