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If the office is open until five, we’ll have plenty of time to go there this
afternoon.
If the office will be open until five, we’ll have plenty of time to go there
this afternoon.
What’s the difference in meaning between the above two sentences?
I’d say the sentence with ‘will’ in the IF clause in essence refers to a
specifically stated future reality rather than to a condition. In other
words, perhaps someone has just told you that the office will be open later
than usual today – it will be open until five:
If (it is true that) the office will be open until five, we’ll have plenty
of time to go there this afternoon.
I suppose you might say that the unspoken condition in that sentence is “it
is true”.
This is not the most commonly used format for an IF sentence, but in my
opinion it is one of several grammatically correct ways to use ‘will’ in an
IF clause.