Google Doc Spreadsheet IF Statements

I was working in a shared Google Doc Spreadsheet this week and needed to figure out how to use if statements. It turns out it’s pretty simple!

Here is a support.google.com post on if statements. And here is a more-advanced, view-only Google Doc I found that outlines some more advanced options like =AND() and =SUMIF(). But here’s a quick example with the basic IF:

The general example is:

=IF(logical_expression, value_if_true, value_if_false")

Let’s say we’re got column A full of both positive and negative numbers. Then in column B we want it to say “Yes” if that row has a positive number or a 0 in its A column, and “No” if column A is negative.

In B1 we’d write something like =IF(A1>=0,"Yes","No"), then we’d drag that formula down the B column.

simple if statement example

The Ruby equivalent of this would be something like:

if (A1 >= 0)
  "Yes"
else 
  "No"
end

But what if we wanted it to say “Neutral” when the A column is 0? Effectively this:

if (A1 > 0)
  "Yes"
elsif (A1 == 0)
  "Neutral"
else 
  "No"
end

To accomplish this elsif structure with the Google Spreadsheet IF, you have to do something like this:

=IF(A1>0,"Yes",IF(A1=0,"Neutral","No"))

As you can see, to utilize an elsif you need to nest an IF into the value_if_false part of the master IF statement. It makes sense, but it can certainly get messy if you have a lot of them.