Project

IIF(immediate if) statements are one of the most commonly used functions in ms project formulas. An IIF statement is basically a condensed version of the "If ...Then .. Else" statement which is often used in programming. The iif statement takes three arguments:

IIf( expression, truepart, falsepart )

The first is the expression you want to evaluate. It needs to be constructed so that it has a true or false answer so it is commonly used to compare vs. a particular value. (see this article for comparing with "NA" ). What the iif statement does next is dependent on whether the result is true or false.

If the expression is true then the truepart is returned. This sounds quite simple and can be very simple. You could return something like a text value or a number. However, the power of the iif statement is that the truepart can be another expression, even another iif statement. This allows you to construct and test many parameters in a single formula.

If the expression is false then the falsepart is returned. Like the truepart it can be an expression or set of nested expressions.

The difficult part of constructing a good nested iif statement is to put the tests in the correct order. Once the statement follows a path to the end, any other ends are not evaluated. The second limitation is that custom field formulas are limited to 256 characters so be economical with your text.

The IIF statement is also available in Excel for cell formulas, but in more recent versions of Excel (XP, 2003, perhaps 2000) it is called the If statement with exactly the same syntax.