Column Formula - Do Nothing if Logic Not Met

Mike Dufour

I would like to see the IF formula, or an equivalent, instead of returning blank if the false condition is met, essentially "do nothing" to the cell.

Kelly P.

@Mike Dufour

Often you can write your IF formula so that it won't run unless the conditions are met (essentially doing nothing to the target cell). For instance, if the formula below was in a column "Total Days", nothing will happen in total days unless both a start date and end date are present.

=IF(ISDATE([Start Date]@row), IF(ISDATE([End Date]@row), NETDAYS([Start Date]@row, [End Date]@row)))

Hope this helps!

Ipshita

@Mike Dufour - I concur with @Kelly P. 100% and have tested out the formula for you - check out the last row in the screenshot below that uses the formula but returns nothing in Column14 because the dates are essentially blank while rest are returning value 1.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Ipshita

Mike Dufour

Thanks for the feedback. What I was told by my Smartsheet rep is as follows:

"ultimately cells can only be an input or formula driven, not both/either"

For my specific use case, I have Parent and Children rows for which at the Parent row I want to sum sizing data that is in the children rows, but leave the data in the children rows, untouched. From the above constraint for a column formula, I can distinguish between Parent and Child in a formula, but the IF formula returns a blank for the false logic vs an "ignore", thus wiping out the child data in the same column that the Parent sums the children. I was told to add a different column for the Parents to sum the data of the children. I could also use a formula in the Parent rows only to sum, but I also have a use case where I move rows between 2 files and row formulas are lost when moving rows between sheets (column formulas are not).

In summary, I have workarounds.