Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA, begins his presentation with a brief discussion of the IF function and then takes you beyond the basics. David explains what can go awry with the IF function and describes ways you can improve the integrity of your decision-making formulas. He also shares alternatives to the IF function, including IFNA, MINIFS, SUMPRODUCT, and others. David asserts that if you’re nesting more than a couple of IF functions, there’s probably a more refined and resilient approach you can take.
David demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based Office 365 version of Excel. David draws your attention to any differences in the older versions of Excel (2019, 2016, 2013, and earlier) during the presentation as well as in his detailed handouts. David also provides an Excel workbook that includes most of the examples he uses during the session. Office 365 is a subscription-based product that provides new-feature updates as often as monthly. Conversely, the perpetual licensed versions of Excel have feature sets that don’t change. Perpetual licensed versions have year numbers, such as Excel 2019, Excel 2016, and so
on.

Areas Covered:-

• Employing the IFERROR function for situations where VLOOKUP returns #N/A.
• Learning about the IFNA function available in Excel 2013 and later.
• Auditing portions of a formula by using the F9 key to temporarily convert part of a formula to value.
• Employing the ISERROR function to determine if a formula returns a # sign error as the basis for triggering alternate calculations.
• Comparing two cells directly to return TRUE or FALSE if they’re exactly the same or not without using IF.
• Understanding the risks and complications of nesting too many levels of IF functions.
• Reconstructing spreadsheet data to use VLOOKUP as a better alternative to nesting IF functions.
• Streamlining the decision-making process with the IFS function in Office 365.
• Stepping through formulas in slow motion with the Evaluate Formulas feature.
• Returning the inverse of a TRUE/FALSE test by way of Excel’s NOT function.
• Incorporating comparison operators within SUMIF to sum numbers based on range criteria, such as greater than, less than, and so on.
• Employing the SUBSTITUTE function as an alternative to complex formulas based on the IF function.

Learning Objectives:-

• Recall how to avoid complex IF statements.
• Apply the AND function to test for two or more conditions at once.
• Define when to use the ISERROR function or the ISNA function vs. the IFERROR function.

Who Should Attend?

Practitioners who would benefit by learning more about Excel’s logic functions and decision- making formulas.