Microsoft Excel IF Function
What Are “Logical” Functions?
Logical functions are functions that assist with determining values. In this case, functions like IF, AND, OR, NOT, TRUE and FALSE. We’ll be covering IF right now.
Used alone, these functions can provide limited help in your spreadsheet and with your existing data. But start combining them and you can uncover many possibilities – even if you’re just using IFs and ANDs, you can get much more mileage out of your calculations.
Like any good function you build in Microsoft Excel, your data is what really determines how useful it is. If you’ve insisted on only putting values in every 3rd cell at least four rows apart for no good reason, you’ll have a difficult time with pretty much any function.
As long as your data is straight and you have a very clear idea of what question you need your functions to answer for you, you can use some of these “logical” techniques to do the job!
Okay, Let’s Cover “IF”
If you’ve been a Blue Moose visitor for any length of time, you’ve seen me write an IF formula. I’ll be brief here and cover just the pertinent parts instead of going into detail about IF statements. As an Excel user, this is probably one of your best tools.
IF statements simply test a condition and return a TRUE or FALSE result. For instance, look at this formula:
Simply enough, it’s testing to see if 2+2 equals 4. If it does, it returns the word “TRUE”, if not, it returns the word “FALSE”. All IF statements are built the same way and they can include multiple functions and of course more IF statements so there’s really no limit to how complicated you can get.
One of the great things about the IF statement is how you can use some other logical functions to expand it’s usefulness and create some well-rounded calculations.
Two such functions you can use in this scenario are the AND and OR functions. By combining an IF statement with AND and OR, you can change the condition in such ways that you can determine any number of things from your data. Throw in a nested IF function or two, and you’ve got some powerful logical calculations taking place.
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