Nested IF

[Ed Ferrero]

A little bird told me that in Excel12 the maximum number of nested IF
statements will increase from 7 to 64 making it possible to write a really
scary cell formula. Is Microsoft encouraging sloppy worksheet practice?

Ed Ferrero
http://www.edferrero.com

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Don't know about any little birds - you can get the straight scoop from

http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/default.aspx

where indeed MS announced that nesting is increased to 64 levels.

MS isn't encouraging anything in terms of worksheet practice. It's
responding to demands from the purchasers of their product.

There are any number of announced improvements that will give sloppy
users enough rope to hang themselves. I'm betting that the first "XL is
too slow at calculating my 1,000,000 rows of VLOOKUP()s" will be posted
here within a week of the release.

 

[Ed Ferrero]

Hi JE McGimpsey,

Don't know about any little birds - you can get the straight scoop from

http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/default.aspx

where indeed MS announced that nesting is increased to 64 levels.

MS isn't encouraging anything in terms of worksheet practice. It's
responding to demands from the purchasers of their product.

So where do Microsoft find users who demand things like this? The Never Used
Excel Before Yesterday (NUEBY) focus group?

Thanks for the blog URL BTW.

Ed Ferrero
http://www.edferrero.com

 

[Dave Peterson]

I think it comes from a giant population of:
"Since all I have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" focus group.

Lots of people want to use excel as a word processor, database, presentation
system, file manager, ....

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Cute acronym.

Note, though, that some people have been using XL for years the same way
they did the first day, and would probably feel quite comfortable with
30 nested IFs rather than having to learn the vagaries of VLOOKUP. This
is especially true of those that use the function wizard to keep track
of their parentheses rather than doing it by hand.

One needn't feel entirely superior to them - the tool works for their
purpose, and they haven't wasted a lot of time learning more than they
need to.