Question

Consider the following (partial) Excel sheet:

 | A |   B     C     D
-+---+------------------
1|id | comp1 comp2 comp3
-+---+------------------
2| 1 |   1     0     0
3| 1 |   1     0     0
4| 2 |   0     1     0
5| 3 |   0     0     1
6| 1 |   1     0     0
7| 3 |   0     0     1

As an example, if filled in all zero’s and one’s in columns B, C and D by hand. I need to automate this because my dataset is to large to do it all manually. I need, for instance for cell B2, a formula which checks whether value of A2 is similar to company id in cell B1. If so, set a 1, else a 0. Another example: take row 4. It has company id 2 in cell A4 so B4 (comp1) should be 0, C4 1 and D4 0.

I have used the following formula in cell B2, ready to be dragged to all other cells:

=IF($A2=RIGHT(B$1;1);1;0)

However, it puts a 0 in B2. I don’t understand, because A2 has value 1, and so does RIGHT(B1;1), so IF(1=1;1;0), so B2 should get value 1. But it doesn’t where am I going wrong?

Answer 1

Because right() returns a string and you compare a string to a number. You need to transform that string to a number, e.g. with value(right(…)).