Multiple IF statements in Excel not working

This question was answered in the comments, but I thought I would add an answer with an example of how to nest IF statements for anyone that found this question because they are having issues with nesting IF statements.

When you add an IF statement to a formula in excel, you have to keep in mind that IF statements have 3 parts separated with commas:

• The first value is the condition you are going to check
• The second value is the value you want returned if that condition is true
• The third value is the value you want returned if that condition is false

So here's an example that illustrates that:

=IF(condition to check, value if condition is true, value if condition is false)

Here is an example IF statement:

=IF(A1="Hello","World","something else")

If you are getting FALSE returned then your IF statement probably looks like this:

=IF(A1="Hello","World")

Notice that there are only 2 values inside this IF statement: the condition you are checking (A1="Hello") and what you want displayed if that is true ("World"). FALSE would be displayed if the value in A1 is something other than Hello because you haven't included the third value in the IF that defines what you want displayed if A1 is not Hello (this value is listed as something else in the example above)

It's best to try and avoid nesting IF statements if you can because they can be hard to keep track of. I would suggest using AND() or OR() instead if you can. They are very similar to each other, you list multiple conditions within the parens separated by commas that you will be checking against, and both evaluate to either True or False. The only difference is that for AND() every condition within the parens needs to be true for it to evaluate to True where OR() only one of the conditions listed in the parens needs to be true for it to return True.

So, for example, if you wanted to display World if A1 is Hello or Hi and you were to use nested IF statements it would look like this:

=IF(A1="Hello","World",IF(A1="Hi","World","something else"))

which in my opinion is really ugly. however, if you used OR() instead of nesting IF statements it would look like this:

=IF(OR(A1="Hello",A1="Hi"),"World","something else")

AND() works the same way, but instead of just needing one condition within the parens to be true to return True as OR() does, with AND() all conditions inside of the AND() need to be true to display your value instead of just one. here's an example AND():

=IF(AND(A1="Hello",B1=""),"World","something else")

in this case "World" would be displayed only if A1 is Hello AND B1 is empty

for both AND() and OR() you can have more than just 2 values inside if you need to check for more than 2 conditions, you just need to separate them each with commas, like this:

AND(condition1, condition2, condition3, ....)

OR(condition1, condition2, condition3, .....)

but, if you have to use nested IF statements, the easiest way I've found is to type IF( , , ) first thing to make sure you are allowing for all 3 values that need to be inside of the IF and you have the right amount of values inside the IF. If you are getting the message You've entered too many arguments for this function it is because you have entered more than 3 values inside your IF, like this:

=IF(A1="Hello","World","something else","this value is causing the issue")

so, to properly nest an IF in your formula, type IF( , , ) first off where you want the IF statement to be in your formula and then just fill in the blanks, then you avoid entering too few values which results in FALSE being displayed if your condition is not true or You've entered too many arguments for this function because you entered more than 3 values in your IF

Hope this helps to understand IF statements and how to nest them properly.