Read The Result, Not The Formula

[gr8whthunter76]

I have searched this everyway I can think of with no luck so if this has been answered before, my apologies. If I am a complete moron for not figuring out how to do this, I also accept that lol. How do you get excel to compare the value from the result of a formula as opposed to the formula itself. For example if I put =a1+b1 in cell d1 and the value that comes up in the cell d1 is 5. If I put =a2+b2+c2 in cell d2 and the value that comes up in the cell d2 is 1. If I right a formula in d3 that says =if(d1>d2,"True","False"), that should be true obviously cause 5 is greater than 1, but it always comes back as false and I have to imagine it is because the formula in d2 is greater than the formula in d1 as in there are more characters in d2 as apposed to d1. I've read about using the command value, but that doesn't seem to work. I am sure you all will figure it out in 2 seconds and I appreciate that.

 

[Joe4]

You don't need to do anything special. Formulas already will compare the values of the cells they are referencing, and NOT the underlying formula.

If it is not behaving the way you expect, I suspect that at least one, if not both, of your formulas are returning TEXT values instead of NUMERIC ones.
If you post some actual data and your real formulas, we can help you figure it out.

 

[gr8whthunter76]

It totally is a formatting issue. I started with a clean workbook and things worked fine. My apologies, I guess I must have had the formatting all jacked up.

 

[Joe4]

I am glad you got it worked out.
However, formatting does not actually affect the results of your formulas - only how the data is viewed/presented.

 

[gr8whthunter76]

Formatting my have not been the right word.............none the less a clean spreadsheet solved the problem lol.

 

[Joe4]

OK, I am guessing maybe you had some numbers entered as text, or something like that.