I do a lot with spreadsheets. And when I work in spreadsheets I work in OpenOffice. Most people know the ins and outs of spreadsheets, but many don’t realize just how powerful spreadsheets can be. Openoffice Calc holds a lot more bang for the users’ buck than you might think. For instance, did you know that Calc can do If/Else statements? In this spreadsheet tutorial you will learn how to use IF/ELSE statements in OpenOffice Calc.
Let’s say you have two columns of numbers and you want to add a third column based on the other two data. That third columns’ entry will depend upon the information in the first two. IF entry A is greater than B THEN C is X ELSE C is Y.
But how does one do this? It’s actually quite easy. Let’s start out with a more simple example and move on to a more complex example.
The first example will illustrate a basic IF/ELSE statement that uses only two columns of data. We’ll do a simple spreadsheet that deals with how many persons each employee will bring to a company picnic. To make things easy if the person enters “0″ that means they are not bringing a guest (the employee, however, IS required to come) and if they enter “1″ that means they are which means that employee equals two attendees. The first column will represent the name of the employee and the second column is how many guests the employee will bring. The formula to enter into the third column would look like:
=IF(B1=1;2;1)
What this will do is enter a “2″ in the third cell is the employee is bringing a guest and a 1 if they are not.
Now let’s make this a bit more complex. For this example we’ll have three columns. The first column is a number that represents how many hours an employee worked. The second column will represent how many hours over 40 they worked. The third column will represent how much overtime pay they made. But let’s say you also have to account for zero hours worked. The formula for the second column would look like this:
=IF(A9<=40;0; IF(A9>40;(A9-40)))
For the third column let’s continue with this idea. Say if an employee worked over 5 hours of overtime they would gain an extra 100 dollar bonus in their check. So we’ll add a fourth column for bonuses. For simplicity’s sake all employees make $10.00 an hour. Overtime is standard time and a half pay. So the forumla for the third column would be a standard:
=SUM((40*10)+(B9*15))
And the formula for the fourth column would be:
=IF(B9>=5;100;0)
Now for the final total for employee salary a fifth column would be added that would look like:
=SUM(C9+D9)
Final Thoughts
The examples may be very simple but the idea can be applied to many instances. Using IF/ElSE statements in OpenOffice Calc can quickly take your spreadsheets to a much higher level of usability.
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Excel supports the same functionality.
This isn’t some unique function for OpenOffice Calc only as the title implies.
i was about to ask the same thing jojo answered.. :P
Excel does support it yes, there is a slight difference in the syntax though. I didn’t mean to imply OO was the only spreadsheet that supported it, but it is good for those wanting to migrate to know that it does support higher functions.
Boy this brings back memories. My first paying job when I was 16 years old was to create all of the budget spreadsheets in Lotus 1-2-3 for a regional chain of department stores. Using advanced functions in a spreadsheet is a bit like Karate – if you don’t practice and keep in good form, you’ll quickly lose a lot of the knowledge.
Can this be done with text cells. Im using Calc to do a budget spreadsheet & am putting in a sheet which tracks & will chart all electricity bills, for instance, through the year. Can you have an IF statement that says, for January, if A1=Electricity print the value in B1. Ive tried but couldnt get it to work.
Thanks
IF(A1=”Electricity”;B1)
I read you article, and mostly understand :)
I usually play in Photoshop…not spreadsheets help
I have a sheet that list
Employee / Score 1 / Score 2 / Score 3 / Score 4 /Score 5 / Tier
What i am trying to do, is
if (score 1) is 1.1 +
if (score 2) is 80 +
if (score 3) is 20 +
if (score 4) is 0
if (score 5) is empty (no content in cell)
then (Tier ) is 1
Then the 2nd Tier would be ranges
if (score 1) is 0.7 to 1.0
if (score 2) is 70 to 79
if (score 3) is 12 to 19
if (score 4) is 1-3
if (score 5) is X
then (Tier ) is 2
So each score would need to all meet the tiers requirements and the tier level would be auto generated.
is it do able… could you please tell me how :)
any help would be great
Thank you, I hope I gave enough info
Cozma:
Let’s assume that the titles you gave are in row 1, starting with A1, and ending with G1. Additionally, let’s assume you leave a space in row 2, and are working in A3:G3, just because that’s the way my mind worked when I thought of this for you.
Now that we have that out of the way, what you need is a nested IF statement (An IF statement within an IF statement). For you, I came up with this:
=IF(AND(B3>=1.1;C3>=80;D3>=20;E3=0;F3=”");1;IF(AND(0.7<=B3<=1;70<=C3<=79;12<=D3<=19;1<=E3<=3;F3="X");2;"Whatever you want all other results to be."))
As you can see, I put that 'X' in Score 5 in as text, via " " marks. If you would like to make that a specific number, don't use the quotation marks. The same goes for the "Whatever…" value. For text, use quotes; for numbers, no quotes. I have tested this out with different values, and it works fine for me. I hope this was helpful. :-)
Since the line looks broken to me, I’m reposting with shorter lines, broken at the semicolons in the IF statements. And since I forgot to mention it, this all goes into G3 in my scenario:
=IF(AND(B3>=1.1;C3>=80;D3>=20;E3=0;F3=”");
1;
IF(AND(0.7<=B3<=1;70<=C3<=79;12<=D3<=19;1<=E3<=3;F3="X");
2;
"Whatever you want all other results to be"))
I have used your examples to create a Calc sheet to compute various values and then plug them into a spit out information I need for my work. I have run into a problem, I am need to determine what range the values I just calculated are and then spit out a single number for each range. ie: for Values less than or equal to 1.0, 60. For values greater than 1.0 but less than or equal to 10.0, 45. And, for values greater than 10, 30.
Now what I have is “=IF(CALC<=1;60;IF(1<CALC<=10;45;30))" and this seems to work, except that for values greater than 10 I still spit out 45. I have tried moving the final "else" (30) to the outer most set of (), but that doesn't seem to work either.
How do I fix this?
sorry, “CALC” is the input field I am referencing.
In your internal IF statement, you have 1<CALC<=10. Remove '1<', as it is redundant and messing up the syntax. I have tested this and can confirm it to work. Also, be aware that this will also return 60 if CALC is blank. Any other questions about this, feel free to send to daemonicapathy@gmail.com and we can kill this old thread.
Thanks, I will give this a try…
Dae – THANK YOU!! Removing the “1<" and all the lower portions of the equality statemtents for all of my conditions worked!! I really appreciate it!
No problem. I might suggest adding a last condition, for when fields are blank, unless that doesn’t matter to you. In that case, you would have it display an error message or something when the CALC field is blank. The value for a blank cell is two double quotes in succession (“”).
I’ve been trying to do this for ages, but somehow it always gives me an error.
if the number in E4 > 0, the number in D4 = 1
if the number in E4 > 20, the number in D4 = 2
if the number in E4 > 45, the number in D4 = 3
if the number in E4 > 75, the number in D4 = 4
if the number in E4 > 110, the number in D4 = 5
if the number in E4 > 150, the number in D4 = 6
etc. (The number keeps increasing with 20, plus 5 per step, I don’t mind if this is a manual input though).
Anyone know how to do this?
Cheers,
Niels
Finally I made it!!!
Hello All, I’m very new to Calc and am trying to create a sheet that will have a column of dates, with two blank rows for weekend days. By following examples on this and other sites, I’ve come up with this:
=IF(WEEKDAY(A9+1;2)<6;(A9+1);"")
A9 has a date in it. When I use the auto feature to fill in the remaining column values, it displays the rest of the week, but includes Saturday, and then the rest of the column values are empty.
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
hi… can you do this?, if i would d10 would be 00:00 the E10 will put a text “absent”
is there a way to use this if then statement to change the background color of the cell, I know you can use conditional formatting but that only works for three values, can’t i do something like =if(a1=n;cellcolor=red;cellcolor=white)
and use multiple if thens for different values of n. thanks
Hi, I’m trying to do simple addition/substraction, but i’m kind of stuck with the formula.
I have six coloumn, let’s just say coloumn A, B, C, D, E, & F
Coloumn A consist of texts, and coloumn B is a number. Coloumn C, D, E, & F is where i want to put the formula, is a number type also.
For example, The data in coloumn A is P, Q, R, & S. How do i enter the formula in coloumn C so that when the text in coloumn A is P, the value in coloumn C is the value from the previous row add/minus the value in coloumn B, else it’s the same value as previous row?
For illustration:
A B C D E F
10 10 10 10
p 1 11 10 10 10
q 1 10 10 11 10
r 1 10 9 11 10
s 1 10 9 10 11
Thank you so much for the help!
sorry, the spacing kinda mess, i’ll try to put the illustration again:
—–A———-B———-C———-D———-E———-F—–
-(blank)—(blank)—–10———10———10——–10—-
—pppp——-1———-11——–10———10———10—-
—qqqq——-1———-10——–10———11———10—-
—rrrrrrr——-1———-10———-9———11———10—-
—ssss——-1———-10———-9———10———11—-
Thanks