How to remove 3/15/1900 and make the cell blank

[rentonhighlands]

I have a formula that is
=IF(BW:BW+75=0,"",BW:BW+75)

what this is doing (not doing) is taking the date from COL BW and adding 75 days to it. I want it to remove the 3/15/1900 in the cells that are blank. I know it looks strange because excel is adding 3/15/1900 instead of 1/1/1900.

 

[Joe4]

Excel stores dates as number, specifically the number of days since 1/0/1900. So 75, formatted as a date, is 3/15/1900. That is where that is coming from.

Your formula looks problematic. You cannot do calculations on whole column of data like.

Also, I am not sure exactly what you are trying to accomplish with your formula.
Can you explain exactly what you want the formula to do?

 

[jproffer]

3/15/1900 is 75 days after the beginning of time (as far as Excel knows)

nothing +75 is 75, not 0....so maybe:

=IF(BW:BW+75=75,"",BW:BW+75)

?? In testing, I couldn't get your formula to add 75 days to anything in column BW, date or otherwise...it was always 75.

 

[rentonhighlands]

what I am trying to do is take the list of dates in COL BW and add 75 days to it. but if the cell in BW is blank then I want it to return blank

 

[Joe4]

Then it would just be a formula like:

=IF(BW1<>"",BW1+75,"")

and copied down for all rows
(formulas can only update the cells they are located in, so you would need a separate formula for each row)

Note, if there aren't any gaps in your data, you can easily add 75 to the current date without need of any extra columns.
Simply type 75 in any blank cell
Then, select that cell and hit Copy
Then select all the cells that you want to add 75 to
Then go to Paste Special and select the Add option and hit OK

Another option is to use VBA to add 75 to all the cells with values.