Need help with an in-class register.

Hi there,

I am looking to sub a value for a letter in a cell. I.e., make input value "E" = 1. I tried an IF condition (=If(C17="E",1,0); however it creates a circular argument. Basically, is there any way of putting the if condition "behind the cell," while still being able to input letters (e.g., E for excused absence and L for late).

I did search high and low for a similar thread -- thus apologies if you complain about this posting insisting it's been solved a gabillion times (maybe I am bad a searching topics, if this is the case).

Hopefully some Excel guru won't mind helping :D

A.

p.s. I don't want to solve this problem using a new column to dump the If results!

The class register is a series of 0s and 1s, each small cell representing morning and afternoon periods. I would like E (an excused absence) to be factored in as 1 so that it doesn't hurt their overall attendance.

I guess I will have to dump the result of the IF somewhere else, then add that back in to the totals. I figured there might have been a way to kind of have a formula 'behind a cell' whilst allowing input.

Thanks for clarifying.

A.