In Microsoft Excel, I am tyring to enter Max formula that gives me the highest value of two cells. The 2 cells in question are both formula driven themselves, using IF formulas.When I enter in my Max formula, it returns zero instead of the highest number?

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• Hi Brian I is it possible that the if structure is not yet satisfied and therefore gives a 0 result?

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  by nicdebrug on November 11th, 2008

• It gives a zero value if neither source cell contains a number, but that's correct anyway. You could amend the formula to something like this:
  =IF(MAX(D5:D6)=0,"No data",MAX(D5:D6))
   
  The formulae in D5 and D6 I was using to test this was just looking to see if the number in another cell was greater than 30, =IF(C5>30,C5,""). To make sure there was something in the cell I changed it to:
  =IF(C5>30,C5,"Criteria not met")

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  by Brian I on November 11th, 2008

• True. But then I cannot understand why his Max function returns 0. Except when his cell reference was wrong.

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  by nicdebrug on November 11th, 2008

• I'm sorry, I didn't look at the top of the screen and I assumed you were the person who asked the question, which is why I wittered on as I did. I assumed that his IF arguments resulted in both of the cells being blank because the conditions hadn't been met, which would result in MAX returning 0.
   
  From MS Excel Help - "If the arguments contain no numbers, MAX returns 0 (zero)."

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  by Brian I on November 11th, 2008

• Thanks, I thought something similar in other words.

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  by nicdebrug on November 11th, 2008

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