Help with the "no more than 7 IF's" problem

[Silverwish]

hi,

im well aware that you cant nest more than 7 If statements but i cant find a way around this problem. all i need to do is get excel 2003 to read the contents of a cell and then depending on what it finds in there to run a simple equation and display the results. heres a small example of my spreadsheet :

A B

1 Y =IF(A1="Y", $u$5+I27, IF(A1="R", $F$15+I27, IF(A1="RYY",
$F$15+$u$5+$u$5+I27)))
2 R

3 B

where Y=yellow, R=red and B=blue, column A1 will include Y,R,B,YY,RR,BB,YYY,RRR,BBB,YYR,BBY and so on until column A1 is displaying every combination of these letters possible. as you can see this wouldnt be a problem if i could just paste a ton of "IF's" in there, ive tried using VLOOKUP and OR but i cant make these work and im not aware of any other functions that can help.

thank you for your time, im sure someone with a huge brain will solve this in about 3 seconds

[Cheeky Charlie]

Attaching an example would really help. You probably won't need an 'if' at all.

CC

[Cheeky Charlie]

Guess:
=SUM(LOOKUP(MID(A1,{1,2,3},1),{"","b","r","y"},{0,1,10,100}))

Where 1, 10 and 100 are the values for blue, red and yellow, respectively.

CC

[contaminated]

if IF() is too long use VLOOKUP()

Look attached file.

[Silverwish]

heres my full spreadsheet (well as much as ive done so far), unless you play World of Warcraft this might seem really bizarre , just scroll across to U19 and theres my problem. from Q19 downward is where im putting my colours and the table above are the coloured gems that will fit in the sockets, then simply add all the "DPS" (Damage per Second) figures and print into the U column. the items that are listed in the A column can have a maximum of 3 coloured sockets. the socket bonus is what you gain from matching all the coloured sockets in your item (IE if you have an item with red, blue and yellow sockets you would get the bonus from fitting a red, blue and a yellow gem, and if you dont, no bonus), hope this helps, thanks in advance.

PS if possible please try and make your response idiot proof as ive only been using excel for 3 days

[Silverwish]

Thanks alot for your help guys, for anyone interested heres my fully working copy.