Assigning values to text cells

Hello

I'm in the middle of creating a poll database for the upcoming election and i'm having issues when trying to do cretin calculations.

The polls i'm using each use A (Adults), RV (Registered Voters) and LV (Likely voters). I have a column dedicated to these for each poll.

I want to assign values for these three variables so when i do calculations, the formula can be referenced to the cell where either A, RV or LV is written and apply either *.3, *.6 or *.9 depending on the text.

I've tried Define Name and I haven't gotten it to work, and i don't think the IF function would be the right function to use in this situation.

IS there any way i can do this?

Thanks in Advance.

P.S. If you want to see the data i'm referring to, visit polldata.ladakn.com

There is no formula in your workbook. What are you trying to achieve?

Is *.3 etc supposed to be a number or text? You need to explain a bit more.

In general, you could use

=lookup(A1,{"A","LV","RV"},{0.3,0.9,0.6})

If A1 contains "LV" then the formula will return 0.9. Note that {"A","LV","RV"} must be sorted ascending.

If you want to use defined names, you don't need to enter the values into the spreadsheet first, if they are constants. Just define a name and in the "Refers to" box, put the value that you want that name to refer to.

Again, please describe what you want to achieve. Even with defined names, it sounds as if you need to evaluate a cell before deciding which name to use.

If you have defined names in place and a value of 0.3 assigned to the defined name "A" etc, and in A1 you have the text "A", then you can do things like

=indirect(A1)

This will return 0.3