

Is there any advantage to using the "" operator instead of the equals sign? Definitely. Note that the above formula could be rewritten as follows, using the equals operator (=) but switching the order of the IF statement's value_if_true and value_if_false arguments: = IF( B3= "New York", "Headquarters", "Local office") Note that this formula outputs "Local office" for all the offices names that do not equal "New York" but, it outputs "Headquarters" when it sees that the office name is equal to "New York". To do so, we could use the following formula: = IF( B3 "New York", "Local office", "Headquarters") A SnackWorld manager wants to add a column to the spreadsheet that dynamically outputs whether a given office is the company headquarters or a local office. The company's headquarters is in New York, and all of the other offices are local. The spreadsheet above shows a list of SnackWorld's office locations around the country. If you haven't used IF statements yet, check out our IF statement tutorial first.

The following example uses the IF function. Hint: For the last example above, you'll have to read up on how the RIGHT function works if you don't already know it! Output: FALSE = RIGHT( "Boston, MA", 2) "MA" Can you tell why the following formulas output the given results? = "Boston" "San Francisco" Of course, "" doesn't have to be used on numbers. This formula outputs FALSE, because 45 is equal to 45. Let's take a look at another simple example using integers: = 45 45 The above formula outputs TRUE, because 6 does not equal 8. Let's take a look at the "does not equal" operator in action to see how we can use it in a simple formula: = 6 8 This is the exact opposite functionality of the equals sign (=), which will output TRUE if the values on either side of it are equal and FALSE if they are not. If they are not equal, it will output TRUE, and if they are equal, it will output FALSE. Whenever Excel sees this symbol in your formulas, it will assess whether the two statements on opposite sides of these brackets are equal to one another. The constant BLANK is the default null value for the list, text, time period, or date data types.Excel's "does not equal" operator is simple: a pair of brackets pointing away from each other, like so: " ". Use the constants TRUE and FALSE as the result of conditional calculations. Tests whether only one of the conditions before and after the OR operator is met. Tests whether the condition after the NOT operator is FALSE.Ĭompatible with Boolean values (in this example, Active? is a Boolean line item). Tests whether the conditions before and after the AND operator are both met. Consider the use of alternative data formats to improve performance. When you concatenate large numbers of, or long, text strings, it can have a negative impact on model performance. Enclose text entered directly into a formula in double quotation marks.Enclose references to text-formatted items in single quotation marks.To ensure characters in the concatenated strings do not affect your formulas, enclose them in quotation marks: Used in formulas that contain IF.Ĭan be used to compare number, Boolean, date, time period, or text values. Used in formulas that contain IF.ĭetermines if two items are not equal. Both items used with this operator must be of the same data type.ĭetermines if the left item has a greater or equal value to the right item. Used in formulas that contain IF.Ĭompatible with number, date, time period, or text values. If the divisor is zero, the operator returns zero as the result (the DIVIDE function returns Infinity).ĭetermines if the left item has a greater value than the right item. If you subtract a date from a date, it returns a number, showing the number of days between each date. If you subtract a number type value from a date type value, the date moves back in time by that number of days. You can subtract a number from a number, a number from a date, or a date from a date. If you add a number type value to a date type value, the date moves forward in time by that number of days.Ĭabbages + Carrots + 'Mange-Tout' + 'Oranges and Lemons' You can add a number to a number, or a number to a date, but not a date to a date. Use with number, date, and time period values.
