Also, you do not need SUM to do simple arithmetic
=IF(E18<0,c24-e17-c17,c24-c17)

And IF is not really needed either
=(C24-E17)-C17*(E18<0)

best wishes
--
Bernard V Liengme
www.stfx.ca/people/bliengme
remove caps from email

"Shellack" wrote in message
...
So that was the problem....Thank you!!

"Duke Carey" wrote:

By using quotes you're telling Excel to return a string or text, not a
sum.
Use this instead

=IF(E18<0,sum(c24-e17)-c17,sum(c24-c17))


"Shellack" wrote:

I don't think there are any problems in this "if" statement, but it's
not
returning any values; it just shows the entire formula in the cell.

=IF(E18<0,"=sum(c24-e17)-c17","=sum(c24-c17)")

When I test the statements separately, they come back with a value just
fine. I even tried deleting the =sum in the formula thinking there
should
only be one = sign at the beginning of the formula, but that didn't
work. It
doesn't give me the #VALUE message either indicating something is wrong
in
this formula. Any ideas??

Oh yeah....I'm using Office 2000.