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Article: Performing two-way lookups using MATCH and INDEX.(Excel)
- Article from:
- Strategic Finance
- Article date:
- July 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Institute of Management Accountants. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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* Most accountants are comfortable using Excel's VLOOKUP function to look up a value in a table, but performing a two-way lookup (the value where a row and column intersect) is more complex. The solution involves a quirky, flexible, but seemingly useless function: MATCH.
How VLOOKUP Works
VLOOKUP works well for a simple lookup. In Figure 1, for example, a ticker symbol is entered in cell C1, and the VLOOKUP formula in cell D1 returns the company name associated with that symbol:
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
-VLOOKUP(C1,A10:B39,2,FALSE)
This formula tells Excel to look at the first column of the lookup range and find a match to the ...