Have IF Function to Return Yes or No

February 27, 2002 - by Juan Pablo Gonzalez

Chris asks:

I am using the IF function, but I want the Value if True and the Value if False to be applied to a cell different from the cell that contains the actual IF function. For example, I tried someting like this:

Cell A1 reads the following: =IF(A2=5,A3="YES",A3="NO")

However, Excel doesn' t put any data in cell A3. Instead it puts "FALSE" in cell A1 regardless of what is in cell A2.

Functions can only return a value, they can not modify their "environment". So, the "workaround" for this problem would be to put the following formula in A3 instead of A1

=IF(A2=5,"YES","NO")