Creating If-Then Self Checking Exercises
In Excel 2002

Creating the Worksheet
  1. Go to Microsoft Excel.
  2. In cell A1 type the title of your cell.  Use the term Questions or Problems.
  3. You may change the width of the column by placing your mouse on the line just between the column headers A and B and double clicking to automatically make text fit.
  4. In cell B1 type the word Answers.  This will be the column for the students to record their answers.
  5. In column C you will enter the If-Then formulas.  Click in cell C2 and then click the fx symbol next to the formula bar.
  6. Choose If in the select a function window and select OK. A gray dialog box will appear in which you must fill in the correct infomation as shown in the example below.  Do not use any spaces!

  7. Click OK. 
  8. Now use the absolute reference feature.  Highlight cell and drag a copy of cell C2 to the end of your exercise.  You will get a + sign on the bottom right corner of the cell which you wish to drag and copy.  This will copy the if-then formula into all the cells.  You will need to go back to each individual cell and insert your cursor to delete and change the answer to reflect the question on each row.   If correct answers are numbers you will not need to use quotation marks around the answer in the first field.
  9. Double click between column C and D on the gray row to widen the column.
 
Hiding Response Column
  1. You can add another if statement at the beginning of the formula to hide the response column until the student inputs the answer.
  2. Be sure to close with an additional parentheses. The D3 refers to any blank cell.
    Original Formula
    =IF(B2="answer","Super!","Sorry")
    To Hide Response Column
    =IF(B2=D3," ",IF(B2="answer","Super!","Sorry"))
  3. You can use the function argument by selecting fx.
  4. Choose If in the select a function window and select OK. A gray dialog box will appear in which you must fill in the correct infomation as shown in the example below.  Do not use any spaces!
  5. Click OK. 
  6. Now use the absolute reference feature.  Highlight cell and drag a copy of cell C2 to the end of your exercise.  You will get a + sign on the bottom right corner of the cell which you wish to drag and copy.  This will copy the if-then formula into all the cells.  You will need to go back to each individual cell and insert your cursor to delete and change the answer to reflect the question on each row.   If correct answers are numbers you will not need to use quotation marks around the answer in the first field.
  7. Double click between column C and D on the gray row to widen the column.

Math Activity Sheet
Hidden Response Activity with Plurals

Kathy D. Adkins
Instructional Technology Specialist
Forsyth County Schools
April, 2001 (Updated May 2005)