Maintaining spreadsheets is not the easiest or most effective method for managing a project. Still, should you find yourself relying on a workbook to track assigned tasks and overall team performance, it's important to learn how to do if then statements in Excel. These logical functions test whether something is true or false by comparing an entered value and an expected one. This can be helpful for tasks like tracking budgets for online marketing campaigns.
If you understand conditional statements, then you can make far more robust spreadsheets that can guide your team toward its goals. If not, you may be left looking at a disorganized mess of data without drawing any clear conclusions. Here are the basics you need to know:
How If Then Statements in Excel Work
If then statements in Excel set a condition, including what will occur when it is fulfilled and when it is not. These functions take the basic form of "If [condition] Then [statement]." One outcome can be assigned if the condition is true and another if it is false. This is a versatile way of handling essential business needs, such as factoring sales tax into a budget, evaluating errors, and checking a team's progress.
For instance, conditional statements allow project managers to create simple Gantt charts that track the duties of each team member. Leaders can list the tasks that must be completed and create formulas to indicate how far each aspect of the project has progressed. These statements can also adjust the schedule to identify weekends and holidays as non-working days.
What is a Nested IF Statement?
In a nested IF statement, multiple functions are combined into one formula, checking more than one condition. Nested if then statements in Excel come in handy in several ways:
- Nested conditions are useful for calculating sales commissions of varying percentages based on revenue.
- The function can be set to assign several different grades or classifications depending on the entered values, which is great for teaching or training.
- If then statements in Excel can serve for keeping tabs on how close an assignment is to completion, taking multiple factors into account.
It's possible to nest as many as 64 functions, but any more than three can get overly complicated and lead to errors. It may be difficult to monitor the many tasks of larger teams and how those responsibilities are related. While conditional statements in a spreadsheet are a useful tool for many situations, a project management solution is more effective and reliable when it comes to high levels of complexity.
Watch how to build a simple if then statement in Excel in the video below:
