NULLs can impact your formula in ways that you may not expect.
Unless you have set the report or the formula to use default values for NULL and you do not tell the formula how to handle the NULL then it will stop evaluating the formula when it hits the null and return nothing.
The easiest solution, if you have the option in your version, is in the formula editor to change the drop down option from 'exceptions for nulls' to 'default values for nulls'
if not you can write the fomrula to handle it:
if isnull({table.field2}) then {table.field1}
else
{table.field1} & " " & {table.field2}
Edited by DBlank - 02 Feb 2012 at 5:22am