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 ...

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() ...