Nested IF(OR statements with text values

[jimsena96]

As an avid photographer of cars, I have decided to log down every interesting vehicle I've seen in this Excel table, so that when I get around to identifying them, I don't need to keep looking up their registration plate on the internet for further information, especially if I've seen them before. One of these aspects involves a regional identifier, which tells you where the car was registered.

When I do a single IF statement, the area identifier works as intended.
plate1.png
As you can see, C2 is correctly identified as "Staffordshire" and C3 is correctly identified as "Leeds". The only problem is, there are over 400 of these, and Excel only allows up to 255 maximum nested statements. So I need a way to compress this into far fewer statements.
plate2.png
The second picture is ideally how I want both of these conditions to function, so that once I type in a car's regional identifier, it automatically gives me the correct area (depending on the plate's age) without me having to manually look it up. The only problem is, it considers this invalid. "BF" in this case should return "Birmingham", although for whatever reason it isn't. What I want to know is:

• Is it even possible to nest multiple IF(OR statements together?
• If so, where have I gone wrong?

[Pepe Le Mokko]

Hi
create a table somewhere with the identifier in one column and the Old Area in the second column then use VLOOKUP or an INDEX/MATCH combination in your formula to retrieve the Area

( in the future post a sample sheet instead of a picture so we can work on it)

[Richard Buttrey]

Hi,

You need to set up a two column table of unique values from the column C area identifiers and the mapping to th the new area identifier. Then use the VLOOKUP() function to find the column C value in the 2nd column of the lookup table.

Upload the workbook if you want more specific help.

[jimsena96]

Ok, I've attached a modified copy of the workbook with part of the plate data scrubbed for privacy reasons, and also the relevant data I wish to populate the old/new area codes with (saved the webpages as .zips since I'm not allowed to link to them)

- Jim

[Richard Buttrey]

Does the attached help

[jimsena96]

Does the attached help

Indeed it does, thank you very much! Knew there was a far easier way than making one huge formula, this helps immensely!

- Jim

[Richard Buttrey]

My pleasure & thanks for the rep.

[Pepe Le Mokko]

Funny, post #2 offers the same explanation, but not even an acknowledgement