While trying to help the author of this other question, I bumped (again) into the situation that I would like the following Excel function:
=IFERROR(value, value_if_error, value_if_no_error)
In other words, I'm looking for an IFERROR()
function with an else-clause.
The issue is: it can in theory be done as follows:
=IF(IFERROR(function(),error_value),value_if_error,value_if_no_error)
But what if error_value
is a possible outcome of function()
? That would make it impossible to use IFERROR()
: e.g. function()
returns a string, which can be anything, also an empty string, but it might also generate an error.
Edit: some clarification
Let me give an example:
=IFERROR(B3, "weird")
In "B3", there is a function, which returns a string, but even in case the value of this string is "weird", this is ok. How can I distinguish the erroneous case and the case where "weird" is a normal correct result?
As an image says more than a thousand words:
Next to IFERROR()
, there also is the ISERROR()
function, which can be used as an input for an IF()
-clause:
=IF(ISERROR(value),value_if_error,value_if_no_error)