MS Excel "IF" formula??

[FYRGUY]

I am looking for help on entering a formula in an Excel spreadsheet. I would like to enter a number in one cell and have another cell return a text. Entering a different number in the same first cell would return a different text.
Example: I enter the number "10"(no quotes) into cell A1 and cell A4 returns "On Duty", or I enter a "12" into A1 and cell A4 returns "Sick". Can Excel do this?, and if so can anyone explain to me the steps? I can do basic sum & average formulas however stumbling through the "IF" formula I can not get it to work. Any help is appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[byundt]

With two choices, you could use a nested IF statement:
=IF(A1="","",IF(A1=10,"On Duty", IF(A1=12,"Sick","Something else")))
This formula returns either On Duty, Sick or Something else according the value in cell A1.

If you have more choices, then consider using a VLOOKUP formula. For example, you might make a little table showing the possible input values in column J and the desired text in column K. You could then use a formula like:
=IF(A1="","",VLOOKUP(A1,$J$1:$K$10,2,FALSE))
This formula returns a blank if A1 is blank. Otherwise, it uses the lookup table in cells J1:K10 to determine the text.

Brad

 

[KenWright]

Personally I'd probably go the VLOOKUP route as it is more scalable, and is easy to see the values that are in the list. Take a look at the FAQ on VLOOKUP and see what you think:-

How does VLOOKUP work??
faq68-4743

Regards
Ken.................

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[FYRGUY]

Thanks Brad & Ken.

I went to the link you sent Ken, then printed it. I will work on these. Thank you very much for your time and explanations.

Chris