The VLOOKUP function

Lookup functions in Excel enable you to retrieve data from a list. The =VLOOKUP(G3,B3:E12,3,FALSE) formula in cell H3 of the VLOOKUP and IFNA worksheet of this chapter’s example workbook returns 94 as the length of Ninety Mile Beach in miles, as shown in Figure 10.1. Later in this section, I’ll discuss why VLOOKUP only returns a single match:

Figure 10.1 – The VLOOKUP and IFNA functions

VLOOKUP has four arguments:

• Lookup_value – This is the value that you’re searching for within a list, which, in this case, is G3. VLOOKUP looks down the first column of the table array for this value.
• Table_array – This refers to the cell coordinates of the list that you wish to search; in this case, they are B3:E12.
• Col_index_num – This is the column position within table_array that you wish to return data from; in this case, 3 represents the third column so that we can look up the length...