Reference Text in a Word Table Formula

Question

I have a table in a word document A1 to B5.

A1 to A5 is purely the label and the data is in B1 to B5.  The formula is inserted into B5.

I have text in B2.  One of two words - Either Refund or Payable.

I want to do a calculation on the other data depending on what word appears in B2.

If I was using Excel, my formula would be this:

=if(B2="Refund",B3-B4,"")

So For example I might have the word Refund in B2, $4000 in B3 and $150 in B4.  My answer should be $3850.  But in the same example if B2 was Payable then the answer would be nothing.

Why can't I get this to work?

Answer 1

You will need bookmark the word in B2 and then use the following formula in B5 (assumes that your table is 2 rows by 5 columns as in Word the columns are A, B, C, etc

{ IF { REF B2 } = "Refund" { = B3 - B4 } }

The above assumes that the bookmark name used is B2.

You must use Ctrl+F9 to insert each pair of field delimiters { } and you use Alt+F9 to toggle off their display.

You would need to be very careful that if the word in B2 is changed that the bookmark is not destroyed when it is changed

Answer 2

Use

{ IF { REF B2 } = "Refund" { = B3 - B4 # "0.00" } }

or

{ IF { REF B2 } = "Refund" { = B3 - B4 # "$,0.00" } }

If you want the currency symbol and the thousands separator (you can delete either of them if only one of them is required)

If cell B2 contains a Mergefield, instead of using the bookmark and Ref field, you could use:

{ IF { MERGEFIELD nameofmergefieldinB2 } = "Refund" { = B3 - B4 # "0.00" } }

Answer 3

Ok,

Does it matter if the word Refund or Payable is brought in from a merge field?

Hold on - got it to work - I bookmarked the mergefield itself.  Seems to work no worries but now I have another problem.

I want to format the calculation so that it shows two decimal points?