PHP to Excel, Quick Question

Again, thanks to folks on the list I learned the "stupid IE trick" for opening an Excel worksheet in the browser from a PHP generated table. Here is another quick question...in my DB query for the values I have SUM(IF(If FOO is this, return this number, else return a blank)) that looks like this really SUM(IF(RecordID = '100101', 1, '')) Which works correctly BUT, if the statement is false it does not show a blank cell in the worksheet, but a "0" (zero). I have tried stuff, 1, '\'' (escape a tick which Excel normally uses to display numbers as text) stuff, 1, ' ' (a space) stuff, 1, NULL (which still returns a zero) stuff, 1, (which throws errors) stuff, 1, '\"\"' (which still returns a zero) stuff, 1, '\ ' (escape a space) The worksheet still has zero values displayed, no matter what I do (except for that which throws errors). Ideas? TIA! Jay