Life & fun · February 19, 2022
Simple method to create complex Excel formulas
If I have trouble visualizing an excel formula in one cell on the fly, I use a trick to make it easier. Let's say I have the following cells | A | B | C | 1|mary| |Jane| In D1 I want to concatenate the cell values if the cell contains text. First I make a formula to check if the cell contains text somewhere in a cell on the sheet. Let us go with A6. A6: =ISTEXT(A1) result=TRUE ; Hooray! Then, if A6 is true, I want to display the text from A1 because I cannot concatenate "true" as I will be doing later on: A7: =IF(A6=true,A1,"") result=mary ; Yippy! I do the same thing for each cell: A8:…
In plain words
This is a technique for breaking down complex Excel formulas into simpler, manageable steps. Users build formulas piece by piece using helper cells to test conditions and extract values before combining them into a final result. It is for anyone who finds it difficult to construct multi-step formulas all at once. The approach helps visualize each part of the logic separately, making it easier to debug and verify results before concatenating or combining them.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
If I have trouble visualizing an excel formula in one cell on the fly, I use a trick to make it easier. Let's say I have the following cells | A | B | C | 1|mary| |Jane| In D1 I want to concatenate the cell values if the cell contains text. First I make a formula to check if the cell contains text somewhere in a cell on the sheet. Let us go with A6. A6: =ISTEXT(A1) result=TRUE ; Hooray! Then, if A6 is true, I want to display the text from A1 because I cannot concatenate "true" as I will be doing later on: A7: =IF(A6=true,A1,"") result=mary ; Yippy! I do the same thing for each cell: A8: =ISTEXT(B1) result=FALSE ; Sweet! A9: =IF(A8=true,B1,"") result=blank ; Thank goodness! A10: =ISTEXT(C1) result=TRUE ; Sweet! A11: =IF(A10=true,C1,"") result=jane ; Thank goodness! I know I am going to ultimately combine them with concatenate like so: A12: =CONCATENATE(A7," ",A9," ",A11) result=mary jane Right now it is a mess, but it is easy to follow and create each formula. Now I just copy the formula from the correct cell into the final concatenation (A12) To start, I will replace "A7" in the A12 formula with the formula from A7 minus the "=" sign: A12: =CONCATENATE(IF(A6=true,A1,"")," ",A9," ",A11) result=No change ; Perfect! I continue that process with A9 and A11 in cell A12 formula to get this: A12: =CONCATENATE(IF(A6=1,A1,"")," ",IF(A8=1,B1,"")," ",IF(A10=1,C1,"")) result=No change ; 100% success so far! Now I keep copying the referred cells with formulas(A6, A8, & A10) until I have only the cells with data left(A1, B1, & C1) in the A12 formula: A12: =CONCATENATE(IF(ISTEXT(A1)=1,A1,"")," ",IF(ISTEXT(B1)=1,B1,"")," ",IF(ISTEXT(C1)=1,C1,"")) result=No change ; Phew... Plug that formula from A12 into D1 and it is finished. Using this method, I find it very easy to work out more complex formulas. I wish I had figured this out on day 1.
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