No if's or while's in a switch case?

Tumbleweed:
I thought a switch case was just a neater way of having a bunch of if statements, but I can't find an example of one with any other control statements inside it. Is this not possible?

Absolutely it is possible. Post code that demonstrates the problem. Not a snippet.

Stripping your example back to compile, like this:

void memSet()
{
int lcd_key = 1;


    switch (lcd_key)               // depending on which button was pushed, we perform an action
  {
  case 1:

    {    

    }

    break;


  case 2:                
    {  

    }
    break;


  case 3:
    { 


    }
    break;


   
  }


}

void setup () {}
void loop () {}

I get no errors.

I can not get an if statement, while loop, or for loop to work inside of a switch case statement.

Your example did not have a while, if or for in it, so I don't know what it was supposed to prove.

Perhaps also post the error message?