Consider the Excel worksheet where A1 is blank, and A2, B1, B2 have the indicated formulas:

The values of these cells are:

Excel does not put a blank in B1, it places a 0. That has caused me problems. I know there are workarounds for this (see, for example Stop treating blanks as zeros).

Why does Excel put in a zero in this simple situation? Is there an option in Excel that will fix this? [Note: The option to display zero as blank does not fix this]. Or do I always have to do a workaround that involves testing if the original cell is blank or has zero length and then putting in an empty string?