The ISTEXT function is an information function which will return either TRUE or FALSE if the selected cell or values result in a text string. Note that numbers or date values stored as text will return a result of TRUE.

This is the format of the ISTEXT function:

=ISTEXT(REFERENCE OR FORMULA)

Here is an example of the ISTEXT function:

=ISTEXT(4) = FALSE

This function is valuable when multiple response types are expected within a field, and they can vary between string and non-string types. Applying this logic allows for error handling before the errors even occur.

An example of a functional implementation of this would be if you have a form whose responses are supposed to be short answers. If the individual opts to not respond to the question, we do not want to give a message confirming their response. Using ISTEXT we can mitigate these issues.

=IF(ISTEXT(C3), “Thank you for your response”, “”)