Unable to put if function

[toony]

Hi. Hope that you can help with what surely is an easy question.
Tryin to just do a simple if funtion as below but excel advises to do =IF(V3="","") * (Z3-D3) instead and doesn't accept the below.
What am I doing wrong? Thank you for your time in advance

=IF(V3="",""),(Z3-D3)

 

[Joe4]

Is this what you want?

=IF(V3="","",(Z3-D3))

 

[toony]

Hey many thanks for the quick reply. Makes all the sense and it works perfect.

 

[Joe4]

You are welcome.
Yes, once you put that first right parend in there, you are closing out the IF statement, so the stuff after it is never considered.

 

[toony]

Only problem I hve now is that the result in AA3 is not quite correct as you can see in the attached. It gives me 0.04 when in reality is 1 hour.

 

[Joe4]

I do not see anything attached. You can post images, but you cannot attach files.

MrExcel has a tool called “XL2BB” that lets you post samples of your data that will allow us to copy/paste it to our Excel spreadsheets, so we can work with the same copy of data that you are. Instructions on using this tool can be found here: XL2BB Add-in

Note that there is also a "Test Here” forum on this board. This is a place where you can test using this tool (or any other posting techniques that you want to test) before trying to use those tools in your actual posts.

Without knowing what your values are and what you want to return, it is hard for us to determine what the issue is.
Note that when subtracting dates or times, it is important to understand how Excel actually stores dates and times.
It actually stores them as the number of days since 1/0/1900, and time is just the fraction of a day.
So dates and times are just numbers in Excel with date/time formatting applied.
You will probably need to apply a format to your result cell to see it presented the way you want.

 

[toony]

Sorry but I don't think that the previous attachment worked so I have re-attahed it wit correct format. As mentioned, the column AA doesn't give correct results.
AA3 should give 60min but gives 0.04. I think that it's because I've mixed dates and time but not sure.
i've used formula; =IF(V3="","",(Z3-D3))

 

[Joe4]

Sorry but I don't think that the previous attachment worked so I have re-attahed it wit correct format. As mentioned, the column AA doesn't give correct results.
AA3 should give 60min but gives 0.04. I think that it's because I've mixed dates and time but not sure.
i've used formula; =IF(V3="","",(Z3-D3))

OK, it is exactly as I described above:

Note that when subtracting dates or times, it is important to understand how Excel actually stores dates and times.
It actually stores them as the number of days since 1/0/1900, and time is just the fraction of a day.
So dates and times are just numbers in Excel with date/time formatting applied.
You will probably need to apply a format to your result cell to see it presented the way you want.

So it actually is returning the right answer, it is just not formatted the wat you are used to.
Just change the format of the cell to:

h:mm

and it will look like what you expect.