IF statement won't work if equals "FALSE"

**hop17** · 07-20-2009, 09:20 PM

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, I use IF statements all the time. I inserted a VBA (sorry if terminology is off) with a line of code that returns TRUE or FALSE if a cell has a formula. So now that my worksheet is telling me TRUE or FALSE for these cells, I want a simple =IF(A1="FALSE",B1,"").

However, it's not returning anything. If I replace FALSE with a different word, then the formula works.

Any ideas why I'm having this issue?

**NBVC** · 07-20-2009, 09:26 PM

Try:
=IF(A1=FALSE,B1,"")

**hop17** · 07-21-2009, 06:58 AM

Thank you very, much! Not sure why I didn't try that as well, but that solves my problem, much appreciated!

**snores** · 11-12-2013, 12:56 PM

Originally Posted by NBVC

Try:
=IF(A1=FALSE,B1,"")

Hi, I chance upon this and find this really interesting. May I ask about the reason behind this? i.e. why does removing the quotation result in the equation to be valid?

**Jonmo1** · 11-12-2013, 01:02 PM

A TRUE/FALSE result from a formula like =OR(A1=1,A1=2) is called a BOOLEAN value.

Putting quotes around "FALSE" makes it a TEXT string, not a logical boolean of False.

**Sam Capricci** · 11-12-2013, 01:02 PM

snores, because as the poster wrote in the original post there is a formula that returns true or false. When in quotes the formula is looking for the word "False" not the results of a formula which are false. If they typed FALSE into the cell then it would see "FALSE" and return that value. Instead when the formula is changed it is now looking for the results false to work.
Hope that makes sense.