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Spreadsheet Basics

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The IF Function

4:26 with Michael Watson

The IF function is called a conditional function. It returns a value based on the logic you specify. For example, say you wanted to know how many years certain countries had populations of less than 10 million people. Or how many days a stock price was higher than $100? Or how many pieces of wood had a width of exactly 7 inches? You can answer all these questions and many more using the IF function.

Now that you have a solid understanding of sum, average and median, 0:00
let's introduce a new function, the IF function. 0:05
IF is a pretty foundational concept in computer programming and 0:09
not surprisingly, also important in spreadsheets. 0:12
IF is a conditional function that returns a value based on logic you put 0:16
in the function. 0:21
For example, say you wanted to know how many years certain countries had 0:22
populations less than 10 million people or how many days a stock price was higher 0:27
than a $100, or how many pieces of wood had a width of exactly three inches? 0:32
You can answer all of these questions and many more using the IF function. 0:38
Let's take a look at the function syntax and 0:43
then walk through a couple of examples. 0:45
So again, we select a cell, 0:48
hit Enter, write the equals sign, 0:51
then IF, parenthesis, and we can see the assistance below. 0:54
Logical expression can be many things, for example 1:02
you can test if the values in two cells are the same using the equality operator, 1:05
or you can test if two values are not the same, 1:10
you'd use an inequality operator and so forth. 1:12
The example that Google Sheets has given is text based. 1:15
But note the syntax. 1:19
If a logical expression, comma, 1:21
then the value that is returned if it's true, the logical expression is true. 1:24
Then a comma then a value that's returned if the logical expression is false. 1:29
So let's walk through an example of this together. 1:34
In this cell, we've written a formula based on if that says, 1:39
if cell A9 is equal to the text Happy, 1:46
then if true, return the text that says A9 is Happy, and 1:52
comma, then if it's not true, return the text that says A9 is not Happy. 1:57
So we can see here cell A9 is not Happy, so this is returning A9 is not happy. 2:03
What happens if I actually write Happy in cell A9. 2:13
You can see that this automatically changed to read A9 is happy. 2:16
So I can undo that, A9 is not happy. 2:22
I can redo it, A9 is happy. 2:25
Let's look at another example. 2:29
If E8 is equal to 4, then return 1. 2:31
If it's not return a text, try again. 2:38
So it's return and try again. 2:43
If I make this 4, now it's 1. 2:45
5, back to try again. 2:49
Notice for text, that you have to put it in quotation marks, or it won't work. 2:53
You get an error. 3:00
And the description of the error is formula parse error. 3:01
For a beginner, that's not very helpful. 3:03
But just note that when you're writing text and formulas, 3:05
they have to be in quotation marks. 3:08
We can use this if function in another way as well, so 3:17
let's just show you one more example. 3:21
Where instead of an equality or an inequality we have a greater than. 3:24
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna write here, if. 3:28
And I wanna display all the pieces of wood that have heights greater than three. 3:33
So if A6 is greater than 3, then I'm going to return true. 3:41
If it's not, Too small, for example. 3:50
So here A6 is greater than 3, 3:57
in this case it's actually 6, so it returns a value True. 3:59
Now I'm gonna copy this formula, All the way down. 4:05
And we can see that through relative referencing, 4:12
we've been able to carry this formula all the way down and for every piece of wood 4:17
that is not greater than three, we've got the result too small. 4:22