lisa donaldson notes

BUSINESS APPLICATIONS

Microsoft Excel

IF STATEMENTS

The IF function is an example of conditional logic – something we use every day!

For example: If I win the lottery, Then I will be happy!

In Excel, If Statements are used for more complex worksheet calculations but have the same structure. The function checks a condition, decides if it is either true or false and returns a value.

.

The function has three arguments:

the condition you want to check the value to return if the condition is true the value to return if the condition is false.

Logical Test

Eg >100

Value if True

Rich

Value if

FalsePoor

HOW TO WRITE THE FORMULA

=IF(logical test, value if true, value if false)

In a formula, the arguments are separated by commas. In the below example, if we were comparing the contents of cell A2 and B2, this is what it would look like:

=IF(A2>B2,"yes","no")

AN EXAMPLE!

What do you think the results will be here?

THE ANSWER

Does the result in B5 surprise you?

That's because the IF function is very precise. You didn't tell Excel what to do if the number equalled 19000. We’ll fix this in the next example!

Finished Worksheet Surprised?

If the deposit in the bank is greater than or equal to 100,000 euros, then it deserves an interest rate of 4%, else it gets only an interest rate of 3%.

This is a calculation made very simple with an If Statement.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE!

PERFORMING CALCULATIONS WITH IF

Finally, we can do some maths with the IF Statement!

In this example, we have inventoried our stockroom. Due to inflation, we must put up the costs of any items that are over 100 euros by 10%. We will get the If Function to do the hard work!

A reminder before we start……percentages in Excel are written in

decimal. Eg. 10% is written .10, 25% is written .25

ANY QUESTIONS?