Using IF to make a text entry return a text entry to applied to an entire column

Hi,

Firstly, apologies if this has been covered elsewhere or I am posting in the wrong section.

I would like to apply an IF function to an entire column, you can see in the picture, I have one column for department and one for comments, I would like the comments to show "Searched" when "goods in" is entered into the department. I would also like the comments section to remain blank if anything else is entered into the Department. I have tried doing this by following online tutorials to no avail. I am a virtual Formula Noob.

MSR Sample.jpg

Hi,

Try,

=IF(H3="Goods In","Searched","")

HTH
Steve

If all you are trying to do is determine which departments have goods in at first glance you could also try conditional formatting to just highliught the dpeartment name based on "Goods in" or any text in the cell. Would it work if the dpeatment name was higlighted based on what was entered or is the information return for some other purpose?

Originally Posted by tkowal

Looking at your picture, it appears that the Comments column allow users to free enter comments. Your question poses that you want to put some structure to the column, add "Searched" if goods in is entered into the department and if anything else the column remains blank. This is not good practice, although what you want can be done, it may erase other valid comments? or lead to other more serious problems... The formula in the comments column O would be something like this: =If(H3 = "GOODS IN","SEARCHED"," "). However all the rest of your comments would be blanked out and lost. You are asking this column to serve two purposes, one structured and one free form and they will conflict.

I would advise that you create another column say "Flag" and in this column add your rule for SEARCHED or Blank. Leave your comments to be comments

Hope this make sense.....

Thanks very much for your prompt response. Adding an extra column is a great idea.

I added the formula from your reply to the new column and it worked in one cell only. I maybe doing something wrong but just to clarify, I would like this formula to apply to the entire column. Is this possible ?

Originally Posted by tkowal

Did you copy down the formula? Upload or Attach a sample spreadsheet...

Ok I have a fresh new sheet ready for the new finacial year, as you can see I have a column called searched which is where I would like "searched" to be input when the department column returns 'GOODS IN'

I need to be able to add this formula to the entire column but when I try, I highlight the column, then paste your formula into the formula bar then hit enter, this changes the row name to the formula I just put in and nothing happens. I really don't think I'm doing this correctly.
msrr.jpg