IF Statement in Excel – do you know how to create one? Watch our video hint and tip to learn how
This week’s hint and tip is about looking at the IF Statement. Some of you might have heard of the it before, but for some of you this might be a new territory in Excel. The IF Statement can be a very useful function in Excel. Due to this it is a good one to learn to then insert it within your Excel spreadsheets. This is on our Intermediate Excel training course but as they are popular we decided to do a hint and tip on it too. We are going to go through it now below.
What are they?
The IF Statement is a more complex formula in Excel that can be used in multiple types of spreadsheets. It allows you to test for something (or ‘ask a question’, e.g. is this cell larger than that cell) and then will give two outcomes, if it is true or if it is false.
The ‘layout’
The two outcomes can either bring up a text-based answer/outcome or they can carry out a calculation. The IF statement ‘layout’ follows that of below:
=IF(logical test,Value_if_true,Value_if_false)
The logical test is what you are looking for or your ‘question’. Then the ‘Value_if_true’ part is the outcome of the test is true and then the ‘Value_if_false’ part is if the outcome of the test is false.
Outcomes you can have
Now technically you can only have 2 outcomes with an IF Statement, a TRUE outcome or a FALSE outcome. However sometimes there might be an example where you would want 3 outcomes. This is possible by using nested statements, so you can nest an IF Statement inside another – but that is a topic for a hint and tip another time!
The video below explains what an IF Statement is and how you can create one in Excel.
Watch the video below to find out more and then try it out using the example spreadsheet below in the button!
Click here to download the example spreadsheet shown in the video to try it out yourself!
We hope you have enjoyed this hint and tip. Why not take a look at our previous one on using the SUM function within Excel?