Once you have mastered VLOOKUP in Excel it's time to move on to INDEX/MATCH. This formula combination gives the same results but without the problems of VLOOKUP.

Unlike the more commonly known VLOOKUP, INDEX & MATCH offer greater flexibility and efficiency. One of the primary benefits of using INDEX & MATCH is their ability to look up values in any direction.

VLOOKUP . More specifically, VLOOKUP's approximate match (indicated by TRUE in the formula) searches down the lookup array until it finds a value that's larger than the lookup value.

MATCH searched for "Math" in C2:C9, then passed the result (2) to INDEX, which returned the second element of the array B2:B9, which was New York. So the math major is from New York. Walter Hickey ...

The bigger your spreadsheet, the more you need INDEX and MATCH functions, which you can combine with SUM, ... The syntax for the MATCH function is: MATCH(lookup_value, lookup_array, [match_type]).

In a nutshell, VLOOKUP() uses a lookup value to return a value in another column. Now, let’s use it to find the closest matching value. How to find the closest match with VLOOKUP() ...