How to use the IF function with relational operators with Excel in Microsoft and Office 365

As part of our series of helping customers with their small business needs Longmont Computer Physicians, LLC is offering these free classes on how to use different software programs. Here is our instructional video on using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

Microsoft 365 Beginner class – Excel
Microsoft 365 Intermediate class – Excel
Microsoft 365 Advanced class – Excel


 

The IF function in Excel is one of its logical functions, which evaluate to either a “TRUE” or “FALSE” value. The IF function in Excel lets you perform a logical test on a cell’s value and then return a result based on whether or not the cell’s value passes or fails the test. The IF function is similar to an “If…then…else” coding statement. You must know at least three different arguments to write a logical function. The first argument is the “logical test” to apply to the cell. The second is the cell value or formula to return if the test returns a “TRUE” value or “passes” the logical test. The third is the cell value or formula to return if the test returns a “FALSE” value or “fails” the logical test. The syntax of the IF function is: =IF(logical_test,true_response,false_response) If you want the formula to display a text value for the true response or false response, then you must place the text value inside double quotation marks (“ ”). If you want the function to display a date, it must be enclosed within pound signs (##). The only time you wouldn’t mark the data type of the value to return is if you want the function to display a numerical result or calculate a formula. Often, you may want to know if a cell passes or fails multiple logical tests.

One way to apply multiple logical tests to a cell is to use nested logical functions. A “nested” logical function in Excel is one that places the cell through a second logical test if it “fails” the first. These functions are useful for determining the value of a cell by placing it through several different tests, displaying different results based on which test it passes. You can nest up to 127 additional IF statements behind your original, if needed. The syntax for these are: =IF(logical_test _1,true_response,IF(logical_test_2,true_response,false_response)) You must remember to close all open parentheses for every IF statement you nest within the logical function at the end of the formula. In this case since there are two IF statements, there are two closing parentheses at the end of the formula. Alternatively, if using Excel 2019 or later or using Excel as part of Office 365, you can use the new IFS function to pass a cell though multiple logical tests and return a value for the test it passes. The IFS function replicates the features provided by nested IF functions, but uses a simpler, streamlined syntax. We’ll examine the IFS function in a later lesson.

In addition, you may also want to know if a cell meets multiple criteria at the same time. You can use the AND and OR functions to find this out. The AND function returns a “TRUE” value if the evaluated cell passes all the logical tests listed after the AND function. The OR function returns a true value if the evaluated cell passes any of the logical tests that follow the OR function. Note that you can evaluate up to 255 different logical tests after the AND and OR statements. When you look at how you can combine these tests with the IF function or nested IF functions, you can see how you can start to become a very powerful formula creator. Combining these Excel functions lets you place cells through a battery of tests, and then decide what function to perform or value to display, based on the results from the tests. The general syntax when combining the IF function with the AND and OR functions is as follows: =IF(AND(logical_test_1,logical_test_2,logical_test_3,etc.),true_response,false_response) =IF(OR(logical_test_1,logical_test_2,logical_test_3,etc.),true_response,false_response) The IFS function is only available in Excel 2019 or later or Excel as part of an Office 365 subscription. The IFS function in Excel lets you pass a cell through a series of logical tests and then return a value based on which logical test the cell passes. This provides a very similar functionality to using multiple, nested IF statements. When using Microsoft Office Excel 365.

How to Create and Use Tables with Excel in Microsoft 365 and Office 365

As part of our series of helping customers with their small business needs Longmont Computer Physicians, LLC is offering these free classes on how to use different software programs. Here is our instructional video on using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. 

Microsoft 365 Beginner class – Excel
Microsoft 365 Intermediate class – Excel
Microsoft 365 Advanced class – Excel

Excel can store information in tables. An Excel table is information saved in a table format and explicitly defined as a table in Excel. When you store information in a table format, you place the different types of information to collect in columns, called “fields” in database terminology. Each “field” contains a separate type of information. Examples could be: “First Name,” “Last Name,” “Title,” “Address,” “City,” “State,” and so on. Each row in the table is called a “record.” A record is a single entry in which you record each type of field information about a single instance of the subject of your table. For example, within a “Customers” table that contains the fields in the previous example, a record in that table might contain the information: “John,” “Doe,” “Mr.,” “111 Nowhere Ln.,” “Anytown,” “MI.” When entering data into a table, avoid creating entirely blank columns or rows! Having entirely blank columns and rows in a table can often lead to problems with sorting and filtering table data. Before you create a table in Excel, consider the information you must collect. Sometimes, it is easier to think of the fields to create after thinking of the subject of the table, first. For example, to create a table to record customer data, you must think about what information you want to collect about your customers.

The types of information you decide to track become the “fields,” or columns, in your table. For the purpose of the example, assume you decided to record your customer’s name, address, city, state, and zip code. When thinking of the table’s field structure, you need to consider how detailed to be with the customer’s information. Poor decisions in the planning phase can be problematic later. For example, do you want to record the customer’s name in one field or more than one field? If you ever want to sort the database by the last name of the customer, you will probably want to store the customer’s name in at least two fields: “firstname” and “lastname.” Noting little things like this during the creation process can save time in editing the table structure later on, after it becomes a problem. After deciding what information to record in which field, enter the titles of these fields as the top row of the table.

The top row in a table is a special row and is often called the “header row.” It is always the top row in a table and it displays the names of the fields for which you are collecting data. After creating the header row, you can then define it as a “table” in Excel to enable the table management features. To do this, select the cells within the header row. Then click the “Table” button in the “Tables” button group on the “Insert” tab of the Ribbon. In the “Create Table” dialog box that appears, the reference to the selected cells appears in the “Where is the data for your table:” field. Check the “My table has headers” checkbox and then click the “OK” button. Doing this then creates the table area within the worksheet and adds a new row into which you can enter your first table record.

Another way to create a table in Excel is to create the header row of your table and then enter as many records as you want to initially record. Then click and drag over the entire table, including the header row and all the table’s records, to select it. After selecting it, click the “Format as Table” button in the “Styles” button group on the “Home” tab of the Ribbon. Then select the table style to apply from the dropdown menu that appears. At this point, the “Format As Table” dialog box then appears. The range of selected cells also appears in the “Where is the data for your table?” field. If your table has a header row at the top of the table, be sure to check the “My table has headers” checkbox. Then click the “OK” button to apply the selected style, and also define the range of cells as a table. Note that each field within the header row of a table has a drop-down button in it. These are “AutoFilters,” which you use to filter data in the table. We will look at using those in a later lesson. Also notice that the table has a different formatting than the rest of the worksheet area in Excel.

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Erie Computer Repair in Erie, CO Colorado

We are glad to be your full time Computer company in Erie, CO Colorado. We have been in Erie, Colorado from 2003 to 2015. We are now close by in Longmont, CO still servicing Erie CO regularly. Call us for a appointment in Erie Colorado. Providing Computer Repair, upgrades, sales, installations, troubleshooting, networking, internet help, Virus removal, and training.

Computer Networks in Longmont Denver Erie Colorado Computer Physicians

Networking is one of the jobs that Longmont Computer Physicians, LLC does to help it’s clients.  Sometimes it is wireless networks, other times the client wants a wired computer network.

I needed to hard wire an entire house with CAT5e cabling for a client a few months ago for internet and file sharing access.   It was a great success!  8 rooms in the house had access to a network cable for computers.

Here are some pictures of the job of the patch cables and routers running into the house and through the walls.

Computer networking in Denver Boulder Colorado router and CAT 5e cable PC repair

Computer Networking in Boulder Longmont Denver Erie Colorado PC Repair

PC Computer Networking in Longmont, Boulder, Denver, Erie Colorado

Computer Repair Windows update in Longmont, Boulder, CO

Our Longmont Computer Physicians, LLC office computer had an interesting issue recently I thought I would share:

After an automatic installing of windows 10 update for Valentine’s Day Feb 14, 2018 (KB4074588) my USB keyboard on my desktop computer would no longer work. I tried 3 different USB keyboards  – none worked.  So I went into device manager to uninstall, reinstall, and update the keyboard drivers.  That did not work. So then I uninstalled the windows update.  This fixed the problem, but the update would try to install again the next time I reboot.   So I set the windows update to never install hardware drivers during the update in (system properties) I would need to choose what driver update I want manually from now on.

Computer Physicians provides PC computer networking, repair, Data Recovery, training and virus removal  in Longmont, Boulder, Denver, Erie Colorado and the Colorado Front Range

Boulder/Longmont Computer Repair – PC with no hard drive used

Longmont Colorado PC Computer not using it’s hard drive:

Computer Physicians, LLC  just worked on a unusual situation on a Zotac mini PC computer in Longmont, CO that had a boot windows drive that was filled up.  I thought this would be good to share with my readers:

This very small Zotac mini PC computer running Windows 10 home with 4GB of RAM was booting to a 64GB memory chip located on the motherboard and was not using the 300GB internal SATA hard drive.  As a result since the Windows OS was on a small 64GB memory chip it quickly got filled to capacity.  I backed up the customer’s data to an external hard drive.   The internal hard drive was not being used except for the storing of a few small files.   I could not clone the 64GB memory chip but was able to transfer the OS using special disk software.  I then needed to go into the BIOS and set the boot drive to the internal drive.  The computer is running  slower now since it is not using the small 64GB memory chip for windows and the CPU and computer itself is an inexpensive under-powered computer which was designed to run on the 64GB memory chip. The problem with this design is that the 64GB memory chip quickly gets filled to capacity.  (Windows 10 uses a lot of hard drive memory most systems have 1000GB or more)

I do not like this design and would not recommend this Zotac computer to a client.

The computer will run faster if the original drive is replaced with a solid state drive and if the OS can be transferred and if more RAM memory is installed.

These are some of the situations that Computer Physicians, LLC runs into.

-Steve

Longmont’s Computer Physicians Computer Service and Repair in Longmont Colorado

Computer Physicians, LLC is a computer service company in Longmont, CO in business since 1999.

Longmont Computer Repair Data Recovery in Boulder Erie Denver Colorado Networking PC services help virus removal training

We provide computer repair and other services onsite at your location for same day service or in our workshop for the lowest cost in the area.

We also provide: Computer training, tutoring, help, upgrades, computer systems, rentals, sales, troubleshooting, performance improvement, cyber security, virus removal, networking, website development and hosting, internet setup, router and switch install and we can use our 1gbps upload and download internet service connection at our office for any fast internet needs you have.  We are experts at Data Recovery of lost data and PC system crash recovery. We also develop, program and create Song Director and NameBase database software.

Computer Physicians services the entire Colorado front range. Our main technician and president is CompTia A+, MCP, MTA Microsoft certified professional with many college degrees in computers.

Call us today for any of your computer needs.