If Then Else
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Business Computing Tips

By K&K Fainges kfainges@bigpond.net.au

The If, Then, Else functions in excel seem very hard to use, but with the wizard, they can make sense more easily and they give you a great deal of control over your excel spreadsheets.

The function means just what is says, if something is true, do one thing, otherwise do something else. For example, say you have a list of petty cash receipts and you want to add up all the amounts for milk but not any of the others.

Go to INSERT, FUNCTION, and select IF. The wizard box will come up with 3 areas to fill in.

The first box is the bit that changes. Click on the cell that you want to test, then type what you want to be 'true', in this case, milk. Because it is a word and not a number, it needs to have quotation marks around it. So it becomes A1='milk'. 
Then, in the second box, click on the cell with the number in it that you want to add up in this case B1. 
Then in the third box, put what you want it to do if it's not milk, in this case put a zero. Then hit enter. The formula will look like =IF(A1="milk",B1,0).

Then put your mouse in the bottom right hand corner of the cell with the finished formula in it and it will change into a cross. Click, hold the button down, and drag it down the list. This will 'fill' the function in for all the other rows, changing the cells to the right ones as well, i.e. the next line will automatically be =IF(A2="milk",B2,0).

Then if you 'sum' then column, viola, all the milk for the list added up.

milk	$    1.20	$    1.20
tea bags	$    2.75	$        -
papers	$    1.10	$        -
bread	$    1.70	$        -
milk	$    2.40	$    2.40
papers	$    1.10	$        -
sugar	$    1.50	$        -
milk	$    1.20	$    1.20
		$    4.80

This was just a few numbers, but if you were adding up an entire month's worth, this saves a lot of time. There are a hundred other uses very similar to this.

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Please feel free to pass it on to your friends, just let them know I wrote it.

Karen Fainges holds a Bachelor of Business, and a Grad. Cert of Vocational and Educational Training. All this is nice but it's the 14 years of having to make sales or starve that makes her think she has really learnt what does and doesn't work. A tutor for all ages, she specialises in helping people get started on the long road to technology.

"It has to be practical, it has to be cheap, and it has to work."

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.         Last Edited 11 April 2006.