[newbe]

i'm sorry everyone for starting another thread in 1 day, i'm ashamed of myself. but i keep running into this annoying problem and searching the net and the forum didn't turn up with any results. anyways my problem is i keep getting the #VALUE! in...

i'm sorry everyone for starting another thread in 1 day, i'm ashamed of myself. but i keep running into this annoying problem and searching the net and the forum didn't turn up with any results. anyways my problem is i keep getting the #VALUE! in my cells when i use if functions to reference one of my cells that shows text.

for example. cell a1 shows "close", if i write =a1 in another cell, "close" will show up in that cell. however, if i write =if(a1,a1), then it'll show #VALUE!, so any time i use the if function it'll show something stupid.

my question is how can i still retain the use of the if function, but have it show any text i want.

i tried adding =IF(A1="close","close"), that would work, but it's only limited to the word close, not any word i type.