Counting nulls/blank cells in beast mode

Victoria_G1

Hello everyone,

I am struggling with the syntax a bit on how to count blank cells/null values in a column. Basically what I'm doing is COUNT(CASE WHEN column name IS NULL)

Would greatly appreciate any help!

MarkSnodgrass

you are missing the END statement in your CASE statement. Try this:

COUNT(CASE WHEN column name IS NULL THEN 'Something' END)

GrantSmith

COUNT(CASE WHEN column name IS NULL THEN 'NULL' END)

You can return a value (in this case the string 'NULL') when the column is null and return null; this will allow your COUNT to work.

MarkSnodgrass

you are missing the END statement in your CASE statement. Try this:

COUNT(CASE WHEN column name IS NULL THEN 'Something' END)

MarkSnodgrass

If your value isn't null but empty or blank, you might need to consider a different option. Another option would be check the length of the value of the field and also use the sum operation. Like this:

SUM(CASE WHEN LEN(TRIM(columnname)) >= 1 THEN 0 ELSE 1 END)

This will trim out any spaces and then check the number of characters. If the length is at least one, apply 0. Otherwise, apply 1 and then sum.

GrantSmith

COUNT(CASE WHEN column name IS NULL THEN 'NULL' END)

You can return a value (in this case the string 'NULL') when the column is null and return null; this will allow your COUNT to work.