Forum Discussion

Aaron Fitzgerald's avatar
Aaron Fitzgerald
Copper Contributor
Nov 15, 2017

IFS function not working

Hello,   I recently brought a spreadsheet over to a new laptop and the IFS statements that I had been using are no longer recognized. I get the #NAME? error in all cells that are currently using th...
Excel Desktop
Formulas & Functions
DamianoStella's avatar
DamianoStella
Copper Contributor
Jan 24, 2020

Hi experts, I have a subscription of Office 365 (in fact my employer has). I am working on a database using the IFS function. Everything works well, I save the work and set the file aside. After a while, if I reopen the file, the formula with the IFS function is substituted with "=_xlfn.IFS((LEFT([@FR],3)="101")...".

When the sheet updates the values, then the formula is not recognised, and if I re-write the initial formula (that is "=IFS((LEFT([@FR],3)="101")...") the formula is not recognised either. 

 

This problem arose several times. I am not sure how I fixed it. Maybe I closed excel, or restarted the computer. What is sure is that it keeps occurring. 

The table I am using is of about 5200 lines and the file size is about 7MB. 

I am also syncing the files with onedrive.

In the past this syncing function caused me enormous problems as instead of updating the new files I worked on, the syncing kept downloading and substituting the new with previous versions - yet this is another annoying problem.

Thank you for your assistance.

Regards,

Damiano

  • SergeiBaklan's avatar
    SergeiBaklan
    MVP
    Jan 24, 2020

    DamianoStella 

    Could you please share your current Excel version which is File->About and looks like

    • DamianoStella's avatar
      DamianoStella
      Copper Contributor
      Jan 27, 2020

      SergeiBaklan 

      Thank you for your reply.

      The compute I work on initially had a Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2016 (by the way, I had discovered that the release was installed with a pirate licence that the IT service provider - now sacked - had sold to me as authentic). 

      The firm I work for, opted to purchase few licences of Office 365. I installed one of the licences and everything worked well for a while.

      Last week, after writing on this forum, I checked and for some reason it appeared that the version installed is MSOffice Professional Plus 2016. 

      I tried to switch licence, but I did not work. I tried something more drastic: I uninstalled everything (MSOffice and all other software related to that: Skype, Skype for Business, OneDrive, all spellcheck plug-ins everything that I could recognise related to MSOffice)  and downloaded and installed Office 365 from the website over the weekend using the licence . 

      The process went through well and I got the message of a successful installation. Nevertheless, when checking, there you go, the zombie MSOffice Professional Plus 2016 is there again.

      Whilst this explain why IFS does not function, reveals another problem: I can't switch to another licence and I am not able to totally remove the MSOffice Professional 2016.

      I am tempted to reinitialise the entire pc, but maybe you can suggest a more focused, less drastic solution to kill the zombie once for all. 

      thank you,

      Damiano

Share

Resources