Question

I am trying to find a string in excel cells, and it works to some extent, but when the value returns false I simply get “FALSE” in the cell, although when it returns a true value it actually changes the cell to what I have defined in the IF statement.

Is this because I have inserted the concatenate query incorrectly in the if statement?

My formula is as follows:

=IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(ET2:ET4,B2)),"yes",F2=CONCATENATE("NA ",B2))

Answer 1

The reason you get false is the bit that says

F2=CONCATENATE("NA ",B2)

I think you’re trying to use this as an assignment (ie set the cell F2 to the value of the ConCat).

What it will actually do is compare the value of F2 and the value of the concat, and return TRUE if they are equal and FALSE otherwise. This TRUE or FALSE value is what you are ending up with in your cell.

So to fix it:

If the above formula is in the cell F2, then just remove the F2= from the formula and it should work.

If the above formula not in the cell F2, then you need to put either this same formula or a slightly altered one into that cell to populate F2.