NOT (ISBLANK) formula

DaveG

I have 5 dropdown "status" columns, and one "summary" column that needs to auto-populate. Looks like this:

I need the Condition (Automated) cell to look at the previous 5 cells, determine which is populated, then enter the name of the cell that is populated. In this case, the "2. Design" cell is populated from the drop down list, and the "Condition (Automated)" column reflects that… because I manually populated the column.

I asked Smartsheet's AI to write a formula for the Condition column to look at the 5 status columns then populate the Condition column…

This is an elegant solution! So I copied it, populating the fields. Unfortunately I can't get it to work, it gives me the dreaded #UNPARSEABLE message. Here's what my formula looks like:

Interestingly, it works if I only tell it to check the first column. When I try to add the second column I get the "#UNPARSEABLE" response.

Wondering if I missed a quote, a coma, or a parenthesis somewhere… OR if there's an easier formula for this task? (Automation does this well, but I need automation to do something else with the same cells simultaneously (and automation can ONLY do one of these two tasks at a time)… so I need a formula to read the cells.)

Thanks for reading this, and thanks in advance for any help!

AdamSYNH

Hi @DaveG , Try removing the space between your nested IF and the opening bracket (

=IF(NOT(ISBLANK([1. Planning]@row)), "1. Planning", IF(NOT(ISBLANK( etc…

DaveG

Adam, I verified no space… unfortunately the result is the same. Thanks, for the excellent suggestion, though!

Nic Larsen

Can you copy and paste your formula rather than screenshot it? I agree with Adam, I see spaces throughout the formula but otherwise structurally looks correct at a glance. But it could just be the screenshot.

AdamSYNH

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/488123#Comment_488123

Hi @DaveG,

I recreated the relevant columns from your sheet, the formula does work. Please could you copy and paste the below into your sheet and let us know if it fixes the issue?

=IF(NOT(ISBLANK([1. Planning]@row )), "1. Planning", IF(NOT(ISBLANK([2. Design]@row )), "2. Design", IF(NOT(ISBLANK([3. Construction]@row )), "3. Construction", IF(NOT(ISBLANK([4. Closeout]@row )), "4. Closeout", IF(NOT(ISBLANK([5. Non-Process]@row )), "5. Non-Process", "")))))

DaveG

That worked perfectly in the other rows! I wonder if there's some "issue" leftover from all my testing in that one celll… I'll recreate that row and be good to go! Thanks so much, Adam!