CHAPTER 14
Using 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.