IF

The IF command is used as the beginning word in various conditional structures. It is used to compare a numeric parameter to a variable, or one variable to another.

An easy way to understand what it does is to look at this: =IF("if the condition stated here is true", "then enter this value", "otherwise enter this value")

Take a scenario where a teacher wants to know how many of her students have to resit a spelling test. She has a list of their marks and knows that any score under 10 means a resit.

The correct formula would be: =IF(A6<10, "Resit", "Continue")

or she could have said =IF(A6<10, "Yes", "No")

or she could have used =IF(A6<10, "True", "False")

The IF and conditional formatting drill which accompanies the GCSE Double Award in Applied ICT gives a good example of how to use the function.