Logical Test

A logical test (also called a “logical expression) is an expression that returns either TRUE or FALSE. For example, to test if A1 equals “apple”, you can use a formula like this:

=A1="apple" // returns TRUE or FALSE

To test if the value in A1 is between 5 and 10, you can use a formula like this:

=AND(A1>5,A1<10) // returns TRUE or FALSE

Logical tests in Excel formulas can be simple or quite complex, depending on the formula. Often, you will see several different logical tests in a single formula. In formulas that need to evaluate many cells at once, you will see logical tests that use Boolean logic .

Here are a few examples of formulas based on logical tests:

• If cell equals
• If cell is blank
• Cell contains specific text
• Cell contains one of many things

For writing formulas, Excel has a standard set of math operators for performing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and exponentiation (raising to the power of). In addition, Excel also provides operators for cell ranges, range intersects, and implicit intersection . The symbols used for these operations are summarized in the table below.

Logical operators are summarized here . Excel also provides a very large number of built-in functions .