How to add IF to an already IFNA/IFERROR formula

Hello,
I am really new to formulas, I've always had someone do them for me, but now I am in charge of several trackers.

I am working with a formula that brings dates from a different tab via VLOOKUP, and to avoid errors, I used IFNA when my reference is not found: =IFNA(VLOOKUP(C16,'Clean Activity Report (CTMS)'!J:W,14,FALSE),"Pending")

Now, when my lookup value is found but the col-index-num is empty, I get a 0-Jan-00 result.

where do I add to my formula (IF =0,"Pending") without affecting the other formula that is currently working well? I've tried several diferent things and nothing seems to work.

Originally Posted by renzwill

I will look for some deeper guidance as I have never seen the "--" in a formula and I have never used "&". Thank you!

You're welcome.

You will find a lot of misinformation about "--". Some people call it "double unary minus", as if it is __an__ operator. It is simple two unary minuses in sequence.

And some people think you "must" use double negation to convert numeric text (and logic values TRUE and FALSE) to numeric values. So they write silly things like --(A1:Z1=B2)*A3:Z3. In that context, the double negation is redundant.

Any arithmetic operation will covert numeric text and logic values to numeric values. Use "--" to preserve the sign. In your context, some people prefer 1*VLOOKUP(...) or 0+VLOOKUP. They accomplish the same thing.

"&" is the string concatenate operator. Use it instead of the needless CONCATENATE function.

However, if you have Office 365 or a later version of Excel, look at the CONCAT function. Although it is not necessary for your immediate question, it provides a valuable feature that you might use in the future: the ability to specify an array or range of cells with strings to concatenate.