🟡 Intermediate 12 minintermediate path
IF and IFS: Decision-Making in Formulas
IF is Excel's most-asked interview question. Get comfortable with it and you can automate decisions all day.
Learning objectives
- Write clean IF statements that return numbers or text.
- Replace nested IFs with IFS.
Step-by-step
1. Basic IF
=IF(B2>=60,"Pass","Fail"). Structure: test, value-if-true, value-if-false.
2. Return numbers
=IF(B2>1000, B2*0.9, B2) — 10% discount for orders above 1000.
3. Nesting
You can nest IFs, but readability drops fast past two levels. Reach for IFS.
4. IFS
=IFS(cond1,val1, cond2,val2, ..., TRUE, defaultVal). Evaluated top to bottom — order matters.
Key takeaways
- Write clean IF statements that return numbers or text.
- Replace nested IFs with IFS.
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