Question

this is taken from an excel worksheet with no VBA involved. Is there any way to reconstruct

=IF(ISERROR(function_return),something_else,function_return)

such that the term function_return will only be stated once explicitly. Because function_return could have a lot of parameters that I want to adjust at one place only, instead of at both instances.
In other languages I would try to use

var foo = function_return(many_many_arguments)
=IF(ISERROR(foo),something_else,foo)

Can something like this be realized inside of one cell?

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Not sure if I’m interpreting correctly (disregard if so 🙂 ), but it sounds like you could simulate this with a named range. For example, if I have the function =SUM(A1:A5), I could create a named range Foo that was equal to =SUM(A1:A5). Then, I could write a formula like:

=IF(ISERROR(Foo),"Something else",Foo)

If Foo calculated properly, it would return the value; otherwise, it would return “Something else”. You could expand Foo to cover whatever formula you are trying to calculate. You could then use Foo in any formula without having to retype the range.