CHAPTER 14Using Formulas for Matching and Lookups

This chapter discusses various techniques that you can use to look up a value in a range of data. Excel has three worksheet functions (LOOKUP, VLOOKUP, and HLOOKUP) designed for this task, but you may find that these functions don't quite cut it.

In this chapter you'll explore many lookup examples, including alternative techniques that go well beyond the Excel program's normal lookup capabilities.

Introducing Lookup Formulas

A lookup formula returns a value from a table by looking up another related value. A common telephone directory (remember those?) provides a good analogy. If you want to find a person's telephone number, you first locate the name (look it up) and then retrieve the corresponding number.

Several Excel functions are useful when writing formulas to look up information in a table. Table 14.1 describes these functions.

TABLE 14.1 Functions Used in Lookup Formulas

Function Description
CHOOSE Returns a specific value from a list of values supplied as arguments.
HLOOKUP Horizontal lookup. Searches for a value in the top row of a table ...

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