If you specify a cell range, any blank (empty) cells in the cell range are automatically filled with zeros. For example, V3 = V1[1:3]*V2 produces:

where [] represents a blank cell (that is, column V1 contains only two cell values). However, specifying V3 = V1*V2 would produce the two values 2 and 12 (calculations are performed up to the shorter of the two columns).