When using Microsoft Excel you often end up with a logical answer i.e. a TRUE or a FALSE. In Excel TRUE and FALSE are actually seen as the numbers 1 (True) and 0 (False). So how can you turn TRUE FALSE into numbers in Excel?
Table of contents
YouTube Turn TRUE/FALSE into numbers in Excel
Understand how Excel sees TRUE and FALSE
Firstly, just typing in TRUE and FALSE does not mean Excel sees it as a logical test result. If you enter into a cell something like =1=1, the answer will show TRUE. This is generally in upper case because Excel recognises it as a logical result and interprets it as a number. If you just type in the words TRUE or FALSE, Excel may see it as a word, and therefore not treat it the way you expect.
Excel already sees TRUE/ FALSE as numbers
Secondly, it is useful to note that you can perform a calculation straight against the TRUE/ FALSE and it will calculate as if it is a 1 or 0 e.g.
- a 100 multiplied by a cell with TRUE in it will return 100
- a 100 multiplied by a cell with FALSE in it will return 0
But perhaps you don’t want to use this feature. You want the TRUE and FALSE to be shown in Excel as 1 and 0 and you don’t want to use an IF function to achieve it.
Turn TRUE/ FALSE into 1/0
The solution is surprisingly simple. Just put a double negative i.e. — in front of the calculation which needs to be in brackets
So for the example above we would enter this
=–(1=1)
The end result would be a 1 instead of TRUE.