IF FORMULA - Help Needed please

SGeorgie 

Your answer doesn't seem to cover all the possibilities. You have to realize, that you, since you're IN the situation, consider the answer to the following question is obvious and therefore not worth stating.

This is a question I would be asking if we were sitting down face to face, and I apologize if it seems so obvious to you:

Is it ever the case that two or more of the cells L4, P4 and V4 will have values in them?

I understand what happens if any one of them has a value, but to me it's not clear whether two or more might have a value and what happens then if those values are inconsistent.

And since that still needs answering, let me pose another, which gets at the basic design.

In your most recent post you referred to those cells by labels (perhaps a column heading) and those labels themselves are

• Completed
• Pending
• Pending Approval

meaning that whoever is entering the data needs to pick a column that corresponds to the state of pending or completion--in other words., that entry already presumes the answer to the question this IF function is proposing to answer--so WHY do you even need a formula that answers the question??!!

That is a serious question.That's a big part of why I asked before if it is possible for you to post a copy of the spreadsheet itself. Especially since two of the cells apparently are going to contain dates that reflect--or appear to reflect--almost identical data: "Pending" and "Pending Approval"   It just sounds like a confusing design, and part of what NikolinoDE and I (and others on this site) offer is help in making sure spreadsheet designs make sense, not just that formulas work.