Formula for determining if a task is due within 2 days.

Question

Hi I have a table and I have the headings:
Task
Date Due
Cost
Location
I want another column to say Status and under that i want the cells to say something like this:
If the "date" cell = within two days from today then cell = urgent, if not cell = normal.
Basically I want a cell to query the Date cell and if it is within two days from the current date it will say ugrgent if not it will be empty or say normal.
I have no idea where to start looking for formulas to help me with this.
Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.
Numbers 09

Answer 1

...and it's right. In fact there are several.
IF must have either 2 or 3 arguments, separated by commas. Each comma that Numbers comes to is interpreted as a separator between the end if one argument and the beginning of the next. Here's the syntax (with all three arguments):
IF(condition,do-if-TRUE,do-if-false)
Except in the case where the condition is checking a cell that can contain only TRUE or FALSE, the condition is a comparison statement and will contain one (or two) of the comparison operators, <, >, or =.
So the first cause of a syntax error message is twofold: the commas after most of the C references, and the lack of a comparison operator in the first condition.
Most of the others are cases of extra commas or parentheses in the wrong places. More on that below.
There are also some logic errors in your formula.
The last condition in the formula is "C<TODAY". That test will never be applied. If it's TRUE that the due date (C) is before TODAY(), then it is also before TODAY()+1 and before TODAY()+2.
you need to write and/or arrange the tests so that when test 5 (for example) is TRUE, all of tests 1, 2, 3 and 4 will be FALSE. If you are going to use "less than..." (a test that becomes TRUE when a certain date is reached, and remains true for every date after that) as your comparison, then you need to arrange the tests in reverse order—the one that will become TRUE last must be the first to be tested. The alternative, and in this case, the better choice, is to use a comparison that is TRUE only on a single date, and FALSE before and after that date ( = ).
When building a nested IF statement, I've found it's often useful to take it one step at a time using a new document set up just for that purpose. Here's an example, using the corrected version of your initial test in column D, and a range of 'due dates' extending from before to after the current date. TODAY() for tis chart is July 18, 2011.
Column E contains the second part of your formula, copied directly from your post above, pasted into E2 after typing an equals sign, and with "Next test" inserted as the third argument. as can be seen, the syntax of the first two arguments is correct, but the logic is not. as the second test, this part will return "Tomorrow" for any due date prior to TODAY. The test will not occur for TODAY (as the first test has already returned "Due"), nor will it return "Tomorrow" if the due date actually is 'tomorrow' (July 19).
Once you've got a working test for each condition, the last step is to combine them. decide on an order for which the tests TRUE on only one date (comparison operator is = ) come before the ones true on many dates (comparison operator(s) include > or < ), then put then together.
Start with the one that will come first. then select all of "Next test" (including the quotation marks) and paste in all of the next test (not including the initial = sign that tells Numbers 'this is a formula'). continue in this manner until you paste the last test. Replace the last "Next test" with "Normal" (or with "" if you want the cell to appear blank when none of the preceding conditions is TRUE).
Let us know how you make out.
Regtards,
Barry