If you want Excel to check if a cell in Excel is ‘NOT equal to’ something, you can do it in one of two ways. This comes in handy when you do not want, or cannot, make use of the equals (=) to sign.
Table of contents
YouTube – Not Equal to in Excel
Use <> to tell Excel not equal to
The first thing you can do is use a less than and bigger than symbol and combine them to create a not identical to. Unfortunately Excel does not allow ≠ (mathematical sign) but by using <> in a formula you are telling Excel the same thing, the logical test is that your cell reference does not match to something else.
As an example you could build an IF that says
=IF(A1<>0,”Number”,”Zero”)
which reads
“if cell A1 is not equal to 0, then display the word Number otherwise the word Zero”.
Use the NOT function
Another way to achieve the same thing is to use the NOT function in conjunction with an ‘equals to’.
In this case you can set up a logical test (e.g. A1=0) and tell Excel to do the exact opposite by using the NOT function i.e. NOT(A1=0).
In the IF example above we would therefore enter
=IF(NOT(A1=0),”Number”,”Zero”)
For more knowledge at this level, have a look at our online Intermediate Excel course.
Related
Sum all the negative numbers in Excel