Missing values in Cell Plot

Question

I'm using the cell plot tool to create a heat map but I have some cells that are missing data, this creates several Xs on my cell plot. Is there any way to hide these Xs? I do not want to hide certain colums or rows as there are needed values in the row. Is there a way to hide individual cells? I've attatched a picture of the issue

txnelson · Answer

There does not seem to be any option to change the missing value to just an empty cell.  I also checked the posibility of being able to change the output via JSL, and the display object does not give access to the individual cell.

Mark_Bailey · Answer

The X is an honest representation of your data. It indicates that the value of this cell is unknown and cannot be shown. It might be zero, it might be low, it might be high, you just don't know what the value is.

On the other hand, it might also be honest in some cases to replace the missing value with a relevant value to suppress the appearance of the X. For example, I track the minutes used by each family member that appears on a monthly cell phone bill. My son joined the plan after I started it and my wife and daughter joined a long time after him. A cell plot of the minutes (over time) for all of them yields a plot with a lot of X cells like yours. In this case it might be reasonable (using one-sided sequential color scheme for all responses) to replace the missing value code with zero to now represent a baseline. In this case, the zero does not represent the minutes that they might have used if they were on the same plan but instead represents the actual minutes before and after they came on the plan.