"airplane" in column A, I need "50"
"Bus" in A, I need "55"
"Train" in A, I need "60"

That's 3 conditions. *Exactly* how many conditions do you have? The number
of conditions will determine what the best solution is.

=SUM(IF(A1={"Airplane","Bus","Train"},{50,55,60}))

Bruno

Biff:

Thank you for your reply.  I don't think what I'm trying to do is possible
in Excel, but let me tell you what I'm attempting:
I am trying to set up a spread sheet where my heath class students can
record the foods they eat on a daily basis and have the caloric value of the
foods show up in an adjacent cell whenever they type the name of a food in a
predetermined column. I would need to assign caloric values to each food ( I
suspect there would be between one and two hundred different items) ahead of
time.  For example, Apple=85, Slice of Bread=100, Banana=90, etc. etc.  So
if "Banana" was typed in A1, the number 90 would populate B1.  I would then
roll up the numbers by day, week, etc. (which I know how to do) I'm simply
trying to do this so the Food and the Caloric value do not need to BOTH be
entered...to avoid errors thus making our project less valid.

Thanks, pinger