Excel Formula Help

[spalmer]

Hi all, in the worksheet attached I enter the person's First Work Day (FWD) in cell E5.  In F5 it automatically adds 14 days.  In cell J5, if they say Yes to extending I want the formula in F5 to add 7 days to it and if J5 is blank or says no i want the formula to stay at 14 days in F5. i also want it to show blank if nothing is entered into cell E5.

Thank you for any and all help

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@spalmer 

Use

=IF(E5="","",E5+13+7*(J5="YES"))

By the way, shouldn't it be

=IF(E5="","",E5+14+7*(J5="YES"))

[#3]

i originally thought that as well but the FWD entered is actually counted as 1 day. i had 14 to begin but it kept adding it to 15 so i changed it to 13.

thank you very much for the help on this. i thought i needed to use and or if functions but it does not. if i may ask what does the * mean in-between 7 and (?

[#4]

@spalmer 

J5="YES" returns TRUE if J5 contains YES, FALSE if not.

In number calculations, Excel treats TRUE as 1 and FALSE as 0.

* is the multiplication operator: 2*3 = 6.

So 7*(J5="YES") is 7*1 = 7 if J5 is YES, and 7*0 = 0 if not.

[#5]

@HansVogelaar 

ahhh see that's what I thought it meant but now makes a lot more sense the way you explained it.  Thank you again Hans.  Much appreciated.