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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 them.

 

Please advise on how to fix this. Thanks. 

  • Haytham Amairah's avatar
    Haytham Amairah
    Silver Contributor

    Dear Aaron,

     

    IFS function is only available for Office 365 subscribers, it came to Excel with January 2016 updates for Office 365. Follow the below link:

    IFS Function

     

    Make sure that you have Office 365 subscription with version 1601 (Build 6568.2025) and above!

     

    If you have in your new laptop an earlier version of Excel or Excel 2016 as a one-time purchase, it is normal to see the #NAME? instead of IFS function, because it's not defined in these versions of Excel.

     

    • Fred Ishola's avatar
      Fred Ishola
      Copper Contributor
      Hello Haytham,
      I am using office 365 (through my office MAC laptop) and also having the same error. I am using Excel version 16.16.1
      • SergeiBaklan's avatar
        SergeiBaklan
        MVP

        In general shall work

        Perhaps some other reason. If you attach sample file we may check if it works on other platform.

  • Jim Murphy's avatar
    Jim Murphy
    Copper Contributor
    Our IT team switch me from office 365 to excel pro 2016 and I’m having these problems with existing spreadsheet that have IFS formulas. What can I do
    • SergeiBaklan's avatar
      SergeiBaklan
      MVP

      Hi Jim,

       

      Replace IFS on nested IF or wait for a build where IFS appears.

  • Tour From Bali's avatar
    Tour From Bali
    Copper Contributor

    Please help me, my IFS function is not working. 

     

    =ifs(E13>0,"5",E13<-2.5,"4",E13<-5,"3",E13<-7.5,"2",true,"1")

     

    why do i always get's a 4 result ?

    • SergeiBaklan's avatar
      SergeiBaklan
      MVP

      Hi Tour,

       

      That's separate topic, better to start new conversation in such case.

       

      As for the function, IFS works till first TRUE condition. If E13 is -10 it's definitely less than -2.5, condition TRUE and formula returns 4/

      • Tour From Bali's avatar
        Tour From Bali
        Copper Contributor

        Hey I figured it out my self after 2 hours...

         

        I've had to switch the other way around...

        =ifs(E13<-8,A$17,E13<-6,A$16,E13<-4,A$15,E13<-2,A$14,E13>0,A$13)

        start from the smallest first

         

        and it's working

         

  • DamianoStella's avatar
    DamianoStella
    Copper Contributor

    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

      • DamianoStella's avatar
        DamianoStella
        Copper Contributor

        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

  • Krushim's avatar
    Krushim
    Copper Contributor

    I recently installed Office 365 officially given by our university and I am trying to work in it for statistical application. I am having error #name in it if try to work with IFS function. Kindly provide help as I entered the same formula in Google sheets and it worked well. 

     

    • Krushim 

      It looks like IFS() is not available in your version of Excel.

      - are you on English version? For other languages this function has another name

      - could you please share what do you have under File->Account, that's like

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