Forum Discussion

JamesTrory's avatar
JamesTrory
Qrew Assistant Captain
8 years ago

How to ignore empty cells

Does anyone know if there is a way to force Quickbase into ignoring empty cells when importing an Excel sheet?

I have a sheet that looks like this: 



ShotID is the key field and the other columns are what is being imported into QB. Look at column To MRC. There some blank cells because in this particular import of the sheet there is no data. However, data does already exist in QB for this field. What happens when I import this sheet is that QB treats the empty cells in To MRC as blank and it deletes any data that already exists in the database. Which is obviously a big problem.

Outside of using some API trickery, can anyone think of a way to simply "ignore" empty cells instead of treating them as blank and deleting records that may already exist?
  • MCFNeil's avatar
    MCFNeil
    Qrew Captain
    The best way I can think to do this natively, and without any code, is to have separate Import fields from your data entry fields, but then how do you decide which value to use in a combine field could be an issue.

    I'd say to use something like.

    If(IsNull([Import Field]), [Entry Field], [Import Field])

    Its tough to say not knowing the whole story behind why, how and when this happens.  But I thought I'd give a suggestion.
  • >Outside of using some API trickery,

    Why do people avoid script and the API when it solves all your problems?