curious about nested functions

Question

Level 2

183 points

curious about nested functions

at work with excel I have created formulas
that bump up against limits in excel
on the number of nested functions.
Most are nested if then else statements
=if(A1="a",1,if(A1="b",2,if(A1="c",3,if(A1="d",4....etc
with enough ")" to close the deal.

Has anybody found/run across
the limit to nested functions in numbers?

emac, Mac OS 9.2x emac, quadra 660 av, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Aug 30, 2007 5:54 PM

Reply

Answer 1

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,819 points

Aug 30, 2007 10:54 PM in response to Pat Schaefer

Hello

I guess that you hit the formula parser's buffer size.

Such limit exists in Numbers.

For the described formula, it would be easier to use VLOOKUP.
example available in:
<http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1107548&tstart=0>

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE vendredi 31 août 2007 7:54:10)

Reply

Answer 2

Pat Schaefer Author

Level 2

183 points

Aug 31, 2007 7:36 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

Thanks for the reply.

I made up the example and its not a good one.
Most of my sheets are real rube goldberg,
they work but too many moving parts and not pretty.

A better example would be that I have 6 columns of data
and I want the 7th column to interrogate the 6 eg.
Which rows of columns has this combination
100,ggg,x3,333,no,yes?
You can identify these rows with enough if then else statements.
And, in doing so in excel, I have on occasion run into the limit on nested funcions.

Thanks again or
as that well known francophile Mr. Bean would say
"Gracias"

Reply

Answer 3

jaxjason

Level 5

5,063 points

Aug 31, 2007 7:49 AM in response to Pat Schaefer

instead of nested if's, if you concatenate the different cells values into an extra cell, than one If statement to test for the complete string might work as well.

Jason

Reply