Case Function Equivalent in Excel

Question

I have an interesting challenge - I need to run a check on the following data in Excel:

|   A  -   B  -   C  -  D   |
|------|------|------|------|
|  36  |          


        

Answer 1

Without reference to the original problem (which I suspect is long since solved), I very recently discovered a neat trick that makes the Choose function work exactly like a select case statement without any need to modify data. There's only one catch: only one of your choose conditions can be true at any one time.

The syntax is as follows:

CHOOSE( 
    (1 * (CONDITION_1)) + (2 * (CONDITION_2)) + ... + (N * (CONDITION_N)),
    RESULT_1, RESULT_2, ... , RESULT_N
)

On the assumption that only one of the conditions 1 to N will be true, everything else is 0, meaning the numeric value will correspond to the appropriate result.

If you are not 100% certain that all conditions are mutually exclusive, you might prefer something like:

CHOOSE(
    (1 * TEST1) + (2 * TEST2) + (4 * TEST3) + (8 * TEST4) ... (2^N * TESTN)
    OUT1, OUT2, , OUT3, , , , OUT4 , ,  , OUT5
)

That said, if Excel has an upper limit on the number of arguments a function can take, you'd hit it pretty quickly.

Honestly, can't believe it's taken me years to work it out, but I haven't seen it before, so figured I'd leave it here to help others.

EDIT: Per comment below from @aTrusty: Silly numbers of commas can be eliminated (and as a result, the choose statement would work for up to 254 cases) by using a formula of the following form:

CHOOSE(
    1 + LOG(1 + (2*TEST1) + (4*TEST2) + (8*TEST3) + (16*TEST4),2), 
    OTHERWISE, RESULT1, RESULT2, RESULT3, RESULT4
)

Note the second argument to the LOG clause, which puts it in base 2 and makes the whole thing work.

Edit: Per David's answer, there's now an actual switch statement if you're lucky enough to be working on office 2016. Aside from difficulty in reading, this also means you get the efficiency of switch, not just the behaviour!