why when i take out the else function it prints out 4 times? (The number is less than 5 -The number is greater than 5- The number is equal to 5 - The number is greater than 5

With if - else if - else statements they are linked together. The program will check each condition, 1 at a time, from top to bottom until the very first instance where the if condition is true. When it finds that first true it executes the code in the block for that if statement and then ignores the rest of the structure. If no statement is true then it will execute the block of code under the single else, which is the end of the structure. You can have as many if statements as you want in a structure but they must be linked together with the else keyword or they will be regarded as separate structures. In the code you shared there are two 'if' structures:

public static void compare(int a) {
   // the first structure is this if statement and block of code
   if(a==5){
      System.out.println("The number is equal to 5");}

   // the next 4 lines is the second structure
   if (a<5){
      System.out.println("The number is less than 5");}
   else{
      System.out.println("The number is greater than 5");}
}

So the logic will check if 'a' is equal to 5 at line 3 and output "The number is equal to 5" if true. Then at line 7 it checks if 'a' is less than 5 and outputs "The number is less than 5" if true, otherwise it outputs "The number is greater than 5". Also, just be aware that there are over 1300 tasks on this site and without specifics (the full code, the task conditions, the requirements that are not passing, etc) it makes it hard to provide help. There is a little slider bar on the page that you create a help post that allows you to share your current solution, with will have all of this information for us without you having to copy and paste.